You know, a lot of this stuff is pretty good. Or just okay. A lot is just too intellectual for my tastes as well, but such is life.
Here's some of mine. It's set in the 40K universe, during one mother of a trench battle. It's called 'The Mercenaries', and is about Mercenary Imperial Guard. I like to think it's not half bad, so I'm not going to wade in with the flow of ridiculous self-mortification that you all seem to be indulging in. Instead, I'll post and be damned. Comments, critiques and even outright insults are all welome (though the latter will be returned in kind), as this is a ongoing work.
'What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons'
Wilfred Owen
The guns howled. And their shells came crashing down onto the bare earth with unbelievable force, gouging terrible wounds into the soil of the fortress, blasting positions into a hail of bloody mist and screams. Sergeant Fabians quivered and desperately tried to dig himself into the bare floor of his trench with his hands, scrabbling at the dirt in a mindless, terror-maddened frenzy. In the too-short intervals between the shelling he could hear the still more horrible sound of one of his squad sobbing like a child. His mind told him to reach them, to somehow help one of the few people he could still help on this hellish war, but his body refused to move, fear of the monstrous rain of death overhead and fear that he would reach out from his private nightmare to find another friend reduced to a bloody hunk of quivering meat. And so he lay there, trembling at the fury erupting around him as the Emperor?s guns spoke.
A mortar bomblet landed on the parapet above him with a thud he could feel through his boots. Some involuntary curiosity made him look up at the squat black bomb, still steaming with the heat of it's passage. He ducked back down and desperately clawed at the earth for a few more seconds before the blast lifted him from his feet and flung him headlong into darkness.....
As the world slowly drained of colour, he found his mind draw back to the most dark, painful parts of his memory. His awakening in the barrack-house on Sarraca, and the creeping certainty he would never see his family again. The humiliation of training. A message from his wife, torn open with childlike hope only to find abandonment staring into his eyes like Death himself. His joy on promotion to sergeant only to find it was because every other recruit of his group was dead. The discovery that his regiment were, in fact, traitors, and him to. The ever-present dread that the Imperium was hunting him, and now, the caphocany of explosives landing all around him, surely the wrath of a vengeful Emperor as he awoke into the nightmare......
'Take heart men! screams the priest. 'The Chaos gods are with us! With their power we shall be rid of the minions of the False Emperor!' He goes off into a rant about an earthly paradise of sensual wonders. Drang laughed. Here, on a battlefield strewn with death and horror, with shellfire cratering the earth and shrapnel whirring through earth and flesh alike, and he thinks to inspire these men. They never learn, these priests. These men are not zealous conscripts to be led into the fray like lambs to the slaughter for the promise of your god's forgiveness. Another bomb blast, and the priest's communion with whatever god was cut short in a bloody spray of red as the artillery spoke again, the howls of the Earthshakers now replaced by the dull bass of the Medusa siege guns. Now the loyalists had been lured close by the lack of fire from the traitor guns. Maybe they thought them all dead. Most likely they didn't care. Fools.
And the Valkyries swept overhead, the screams of the engines mingling with the whoops of the mercenaries inside. Guns blazing, they cut a bloody swathe through the loyalist infantry as it advanced through the hellish war zone, men dropping to the ground as auto gun rounds tore through their bodies, the wounds steaming in the icy morning air. They zoomed past the Medusas, concussion waves from the fuel-air bombs flinging the fifty-tonne tanks through the air like toys, men reduced to a bloody pulp by the sheer force. Through the front ranks of the enemy, the door guns spitting destruction into the flanks of vehicles, structures and men with a merry abandon.
The mercenaries swept through the black clouds of smoke, and came to hover like raptors over the enemy command centre, fire blazing out from the Valkyries into the men below. Some bolder guardsmen sprinted to man the emplaced guns on the fortress?s roof. A few seconds, and these erupted into flame and screaming as the gunship?s guns tore through the Cadians.
Instead of landing, the lead gunship slowly descended, its black, predatory shape looming over the entrance, to height of roughly fifteen feet. And a figure leapt forth. Drang, his mind burning with unstoppable fury, the hate for his foe welling up in his chest so much he felt as if his spit were turned to venom. His retinue followed him, down from their lofty perch and down into the black oblivion of the fortress, to hunt their last true foe.
Tyrus.
The alarms howled. In the enclosed space of the armoury the noise and flashing red light of the klaxon was so loud against the bare rockcrete walls it nearly drowned out the voice of the confessor as he blessed the two hundred inquisitorial specialists, men handpicked for their piety and courage, the shiny carapace armour and resplendent, burnished bronze decorations highlighted under the throbbing red light. Imprecations against the heretical weaponry of their enemies, that they may find glory, salvation and peace in defence of the Emperor?s faith . The priest finished, rose to their feet and marched out, boots ringing harshly against the metal floor grating. Out, into the cavernous loading bay of the Inquisitorial troopship. Sergeant Leffens lead his men to take cover against a hastily improvised barricade of barrels and massive adamantium armour plates. Proud, courageous piety swelled in his breast as the banners unsnapped, unfurling in the massive hanger, billowing in the airflow from the life support units high above. Inquisitor Tyrus, splendid in his black-and gold armour, power knife crackling as he directed squads to take position around the hanger. Flanking him stood two seven-foot space marines, still as blue-armoured statues. Leffens unconsciously smiled, and led his men in a quick prayer to Him on Earth. He straightened up, hellgun raised toward the hanger doors. Whatever came through those doors, he thought, was sure to feel the Emperor's wrath.
And then the hanger exploded. The massive adamantium doorway was torn clean from the wall of the spaceship, leaving a trail of fire and devastation in it's path, the force of it's passage ripping up half-ton floor plating like leaves in a hurricane. Sparks flew as servo-cables taller than a man were torn from their mountings in the walling and hurled across the room, scything through the storm troopers.
And through the smoke, the flames, the screams and the frantic imprecations of the commanders, desperately trying to keep order amongst men unaccustomed to such implacable, ghastly devastation, unaccustomed to such terror and death, came a figure straight from the nightmares of all pious men.
Drang.
Kais was the first to react. With a cry of 'For the Emperor!' he levelled his hellgun at the silhouetted figure, the bright red of the lasbolts scything through the air before his chest exploded in a shower of gore, the bolt round punching through his ribcage, pulping his organs. He collapsed to the floor, his too-short scream of pain choked off to a bloody gurgle. The body hit the ground slowly, Leffens watching as Kais eyes flashed in agony, before glazing over into blissful oblivion.
Leffens screamed, his bolter blazing away into the smoke. But the terrible figure now stood next to him, grinning with a psychotic glee so horrifying it turned his blood to so much icy water. And then he was arcing through the air, colour slowly draining from the world, his brain numb from pain and terror until gravity brought him crashing down onto the adamant flooring, gasping in shock and pain as the impact shattered his ribs.
Prostrated on the floor, he watched through a clarity born of agony as the figure broke through the lines of storm troopers and charged down Tyrus, moving faster than any normal human. Suddenly Tyrus no longer seemed superhuman, his power armoured form seemed powerless against the carnage, the gilt armour no longer resplendent amid the haze and confusion. Now Leffens saw through the glamour and bombast as Drang closed for the kill.
'You have killed my friends' said Drang with a lethal calm as he strode forth slowly. 'You killed my family. You killed my world. You killed my people. You killed me.' He stared at the armoured figure, the incandescent rage rising up in his mind, threatening to engulf the shattered remnants of his psyche in its wake. 'And I have only one question.'
'Why?'
Tyrus blanched. Terrified as he was, Leffens watched as his lips worked silently at framing an answer.
'I-It was.....' he trailed off, 'It was the will of the Emperor' he finished, regaining some of his bombastic righteousness.
'Liar!' howled Drang.
Then the Ultramarines charged. The first swung his power sword in a vicious, decapitating blow at Drang. Drang ducked, and lashed out with his maul, the savage blow smashing the marine's knee joint into pulp, then slamming his knife straight into the actuator joint of the power armour. The servos whined in protest, and the superhuman figure yelled in pain as his armour locked up and he collapsed. The second lunged for Drang's abdomen, attempting to disembowel the mercenary. Drang sidestepped the blade, slamming his elbow straight into the marine's face. He grinned as he felt the marine's nose crumple under the impact, and, with a triumphant howl, rammed his knife blade straight through superman's mouth, up and into it's brain. The marine shuddered horribly, and died.
And it was over. Drang drew his knife out from the first marines leg joint, before slamming the blade straight down through the immobilised marine's neck, severing the spine. And he stood, savouring glorious euphoria, as Tyrus stood backed to the wall, pallid with fear and mouth working in desperate, helpless pleading......
Drang stood amid the carnage, bloody and mindless with fury, the demon inside revelling in the devastation around. Bodies strewn lifeless about the adamantium floor, massive support beams lying twisted and ruined across the plating, small fires burning where the electrics had earth itself into the fuel piping, spent casings littering the floor like thousands of metallic, brassy insects. Alone, Drang stood over Tyrus, eyes closed as his friends came to join him.
'So this is the world killer' whispered Emir through her scarred throat, so pale she could be a spectre under the half-light, unconsciously stroking the beautifully engraved scabbard of her force sword. 'He is not so fearsome as I thought'. She knelt to look Tyrus in the eyes, searching his mind for the answers to their questions.
Tyrus jerked involuntarily, and for a few seconds his face relaxed into a strange, unfocused smile completely incongruous with his fearsome reputation. Another breif jerk, and his eyes refocused to glare at Emir with undisguised hatred.
'Stay out of my mind *****!' he spat, nearly incoherent with revulsion. Drang snarled, smashing his boot straight into Tyrus's face with blind savagery, knocking him unconscious.
Emir was sat back on her haunches, her normally pale face completely leeched of colour and eyes wide with shock, Axaimander steadying her. Drang, recovered from his sudden fury, saw her face so pale even in the setting red sun.
'What did you see Emir?' he asked.
'Hatred' she gasped, eyes staring into the middle distance. 'Such hatred. There was nothing but hate.' She turned and looked at Drang, her eyes shining with unshed tears. 'He couldn't remember Behemoth. He'd killed so many people he couldn't actually remember killing our world Kam.' She buried her face in her hands.
Drang took a few minutes to steady her. To look into someone's mind is a thing that requires not just psychic talent but courage beyond most humans reckoning, and yet what Emir had seen had left her so shaken it invoked a cold, alien terror in Drang's heart.
'So what now?' asked Malefan, his face and posture suggesting languor but his eyes blazing with cold fury as he looked down at the inquisitor's supine form.
Drang blinked with surprise. 'He dies Mal. What else could we do?'
'But the pact Kam' spat Mal. 'We cannot violate that.'
Oh yes, thought Drang. The long dead pact concluded with a long-dead god, on a planet none of them had seen for two centuries. But it was the pact, the glue that held together the sorry, battered remnants of Varangia?s last Imperial Guard, the last legion of a crumbled empire. You never break oath. You never break friendship, no matter what. You hold your ground. And you never kill the helpless.
'What else are we to do?' Drang said, bitter helplessness clotting in his throat like gall. 'We cannot allow this-this monstrosity of a human, to live. What other justice can there be?'
'He's not human.' Emir looked up at the two ragged, helpless warriors.' he might look like us' she continued 'but I've seen Tyranids more human than this thing. He doesn?t understand' she pressed on, seeing the confusion in their eyes. 'He dosen't understand what he took from us. He thought' she paused, unable to continue fro a moment. 'I can't explain it, but' she laughed bitterly. 'The closest thing to emotion in him..... was pride.'
Drang stared. He stared long after his brain had processed this information, neurones flickering and shutting down as a typhoon of hatred gathered in his mind. As Tyrus stirred, he turned.
'I cannot make you understand' he said to the semi-conscious figure.' You would never understand, what you took from me. What you made me. So I will not give you justice, for there is no blood debt that could be taken from you that would repay one tenth of what you stole. So instead, there will be vengeance.'
And as Tyrus awoke, Drang struck with all his murderous wrath. And so the last words of Inquisitor Tyrus were not some feverent prayer to a dead Emperor, but rather a pathetic, whimpered plea for mercy as pointless and doomed as begging with a hurricane.
The wind howled. Corporal Hedrick Angora and his squad lay pressed into the earth of a massive shell crater, the scorched sticking to their armour and fatigues like wet cement as they looked out over the renegade trenches that lay stretched out before, mile upon mile of criss-crossing, zigzagging lines stretching out into the smoke-obscured gloom, punctuated by the squat forms of bunkers or the lighting flash of a artillery piece firing, pockmarked with millions of waterlogged craters. Hundreds of thousands of men lay sprawled out in front of them, each one fighting a small, dirty and private war for each watery shell hole out in no-mans land. What had begun as an offensive meant to liberate the city that stood before them form the grasp of the heretics had turned into a bloody, futile slogging match, the loyalist infantry stung out in the salient pushed a further hundred metres into the enemy lines and now fighting a desperate, close-in battle for the shell holes and ruined trenches they had just claimed. The Ultramarines 6th company had been all but wiped out, landing behind the front lines which had fallen soon enough into the loyalists hands. But the traitors guns, men and sheer force had soon begun to tell, and now they were barely ten left alive on the whole field, from a company once mustering over a hundred fighting strong. the loyalists had no more energy to continue the fight, and the traitors had no pressing urge to expend thousands of men when they could simply tie up the loyalists in a futile struggle for a valueless strip of territory, costing themselves very little except for the occasional loss as the heavy shells infrequently landed amongst their own men.
Hedrick turned as one of his men cursed.
'Schultz!' He barked. 'Watch yourself!'
To his consternation, Schultz did not apologise straight away, but rather turned on his side to face his superior. Hedrick instantly recognised the look in his eyes, a glassy stare of utter numbness as he sighed.
'Why?' Schultz said wearily. 'What's the point? All this "yes sir-no sir" bullshit? I've had enough' declared the soldier, emphatic despite his utter exhaustion. 'I've had enough of this damn fighting. I've had enough of this damn war. I've had enough of all the damn shitty rations, the roaches in the barracks and the sodding bugs in my bed. And by the Emperor I've had enough of this fucking killing on behalf of one group of over ambitious psychos to stop another little soirée of psychos from being the biggest psycho around' as the anger, fear and utter misery cracked his facade of soldierly confidence, the tears starting to roll down his cheeks, stark white streaks against the dark muck caking his skin. 'I didn't sign on for this.'
Hedrick didn't know what to do, as his comrade broke down into uncontrolled tears, softly repeating 'I didn't sign on for this' as he sobbed. A impulse to reach out and comfort his comrade, his friend produced an almost immediate counter of stupid, foolish embarrassment. He wavered, arm half outstretched, for what seemed like an eternity until trooper Hart, the only female soldier in the squad, clambered across her silent colleagues and held Schultz close to her until he regained some measure of control, the comfort of physical closeness even through a foot of armour, ammunition and explosives calming him to a point where he looked up at Hedrick and, with a barely recognisable quaver in his voice, apologised.
Hedrick waved off the apology, and patted his friends shoulder plate in a comforting manner. Schultz lifted himself back up to the parapet, and the rest of the squad smiled, the private, resigned depression in each of them lifted by the sudden intense outpouring of the grief that each one of them held in their hearts. They each returned to their overwatch of the battle, each one confident and assured of the unity of their squad once again. Though they had yet to fully realise it, but at that moment they had transcended the bonds of trust into a strange kind of familial love unique to the warrior, comrade to comrade, hero to hero.
And within thirty seconds this bond was broken, leaving them all stone dead on the ground, sacrifices to a god of war who strode the field of battle in a glorious euphoria of bloodlust and fury, drunk with his own power and the joy of killing, unstoppable, unkillable and utterly implacable in his maelstrom of vengeance.
Sturm und Drang.
Leffens awoke. For that one blissful second, he though he was lying on his bunk on the Malengrad, waiting in those long slow moments of drowsy peace for the soft tread of his comrades to trudge into the warm, dark room and announce, to general disbelief and cursing, that it was time to go on shift.
Then he remembered.
Pain tore into his body, lancing up and down him in a flurry of incendiary flashes as his brain began to register the throbbing, dull bruises mottled across every part of his body, the life-sapping ache of his broken right arm, the red-hot pinpricks from shrapnel cuts and the terrible, ragged wound to his abdomen that left him gasping in agony with every breath.
Twitching and convulsing as his own body tortured him, Leffens squeezed his eyes shut and ground his teeth together as he desperately tried to smother his own screams of pain by sheer force of will. He kicked, and was rewarded with a fresh stab of red-hot agony as his leg connected with something hard, smooth and unyielding. He groaned, and cursed violently.
Leffens froze. From above him came a faint, almost silent noise more terrifying, more sinister and more utterly chilling than the daemon?s scream of artillery or the lone, loud report of a sniper rifle. A dark, evil little chuckle that poured ice into his chest and froze his blood.
Fighting to retain his composure, Leffens had to use all his willpower to simply roll over and look up.
Drang blocked out the sky, his features void and black in the feeble twilight. Lighting crashed, and for a second Leffens could see, clearly, the features of his killer. Eyes utterly black and empty, the retinas engorged to such a point that the rest of the eye was blocked out. Skin white as bone in the brilliant glare of the lighting. Face twisted into a psychotic, animalistic snarl that pulled the skin all the way up to a vicious scalp wound that trickled blood down his features, adding a terrible savagery to his already fearful countenance. A brutal, red-black blade hung at his hip, its form contorting and twisting as the daemon imprisoned in it strove for escape.
Drang looked down, his mind fighting desperately to retain control of his actions against the madness and drugs coursing through his brain, nerves and muscles, all screaming for blood, vengeance and glorious, uncontrolled violence. The daemon at his hip snarled and cursed, its own savagery railing further against the restraints imposed on it by his will. He shuddered, and with one, last, desperate rally, pushed aside the madness, the hate and the fury, and collapsed to his knees, his body tallying up the wounds, the stress, the ignored pain and the drug poisoning all together in one, crippling blow that forced him to his knees.
So much pain, thought Drang as he pitched forward onto the hard, cold rock
Darkness. Black, perfect and total, a total void of beautiful nothing that shrouded Drang?s eyes as he felt his senses randomly sway between consciousness and unconsciousness, at one moment the perceiving the world from beneath layers of numbing fatigue and shock, and at the next hearing the scream of the shellfire, the shouts and cries and weeping of the infantry as they battled all around him, the stink of blood and earth and thick, acrid smoke, the rough graze of the metal on his skin as he lay there, amid the wreckage of a burnt out starship while war raged around.
Slowly, he slipped into the dark, the sounds of battle becoming muted, the sensations fading away in his mind. For a few seconds, he was at peace, alone, calm, safe.
And then there came a voice. Or rather, there didn?t. Instead, the demonic impulse simply cut into his body, hotwiring his spine in a burst of warp-energy that sent Drang writhing and twitching with agony, his body contorting with the effort to control the unbelievable, heart-stopping torture that scraped along the edge of his nervous system like a million, tiny razor-sharp scalpels, that burned and poisoned his tissues like venom. He bit deep into the flesh of his lips, drawing blood as he desperately trying to control the howls of anguish that ripped through his body and built up like a tsunami behind the ragged defences of his already broken mind.
Drang opened his eyes, and screamed as the hellish dark closed around him, again and again the screams breaking through the gloom round him, so laced with pain and terror that the very skeletal walls of the downed cruiser seemed to shy away in fear, the screams so loud the air twisted and distorted around them, until they died, torn from the air with a half-strangled sob.
And then the daemon spoke.
?You have failed me? it snarled. ?You are weak, you always have been weak and forever you will be weak. Weak, powerless, helpless as those pitiful creatures who fear and despise you,? it continued at a low growl ?whose deaths you took such delight in. Monster, they call you. Traitor, heretic, butcher? it crowed, sensing a crack appearing it Drang?s wearied psyche. ?You are a killer, Drang, ?it continued, it?s voice changing from the deep bass growl to a sibilant, persuasive whisper. ?I have seen your soul, Kamenev, and it sings with joy at the death of those weaklings. Your own spirit calls for blood and still you deny it!?? the creature raged, battering at Drang?s mind. ?You have strength? it murmured, ?strength enough to defy that weakling Emperor who betrayed you, strength enough to set yourself above the petty strife and rules of humanity, strength that has called you again and again and still you deny yourself it!?
?I have offered you this strength? the daemon rumbled, ?and you have, time and again refused my power. I shall leave you now, to die, alone, so you may suffer your last hours knowing that through your cowardice, you have condemned your friends, your home world, and yourself to an eternity of misery and torture. I shall personally? and here it paused, as if licking it?s lips in twisted anticipation ?hunt, hound, harry and butcher that psyker female dog Emir. I will tear her soul apart,? and here it?s gloating was apparent ?a thousand times for you, a thousand times before I let your cowardly, weakling soul go down into the depths of Tartarus? .
The earth cracked.
The roar of the guns, the howling snarl of automatic fire, the dull snap-snap of laser fire all obscured it, but it was there, obvious to those not wrapped up in their own, personal wars. Most ignored it, dismissing it as a shock shell, or a explosion underground.
Emir did not. She crouched, palm pressed down against the flat, barren soil as her psychic sense gently probed and tested it. She felt the low, rumbling crack, the invisible fissure line running through the battle zone like a sword wound in the planet's flesh. She felt it, and feared it more than any force on this world.
'What is it Emir?' asked Diego, his back half-turned as he searched the distance for threats.
'I.....I'm not sure' she replied, trying to puzzle out exactly what was causing the rent in the crust. 'Something has disturbed the land. A fissure is forming. But what could disrupt the geoplanar forces so much- what' she continued, talking mostly to herself 'what could draw so much energy, that it affects the movement of a continent?'
Diego shrugged. He liked Emir, who was quiet and fairly good company if you could get past the fact that this wraith-like woman could, with so much as a glance, obliterate entire cities in a nightmarish apocalypse of psychic power. An alpha class psyker drew so much power from the warp that only the strongest of them could maintain even a semblance of sanity- they burned like supernova to the hungry daemons of the Chaos gods. Even Emir, mentally linked to Drang so that his own shattered psyche could stabilise hers, even she could be heard at night, whimpering and often screaming out loud as the daemons assaulted her with images barely comprehendible in their horror. And yet the boss had placed them here, a madhouse of traitors and witch hunters, each as dangerous to them and each as utterly, wholly insane.
'Maybe a daemon summoning?' he enquired, his outside equanimity barely preserved at the prospect of rampaging hordes of monstrosities tearing through fellow humans, let alone the effect that would have on Emir.
'No' she replied, also calm. 'Its different- more like power is being focused into an area, rather than trying to lure forth daemonic allies.'
'Calling for help, then?' he asked.
'Maybe.... but the only reason they'd need warp energy would be to...' she trailed off, her face slowly draining of colour as icy, creeping terror overtook her body, her energy slowly leeching from her limbs into a vast, icy black pit of barely controlled fear that she hung above. 'To open a warp gate.'
'Why would they do that?' snorted Diego, oblivious to Emir's sudden fright. 'The only threat using those are...'his voice trailed off, his mind suddenly aware to the hideous future ahead. 'Oh bloody no' he breathed. 'Surely not even they would be so mad to-'
''I wouldn't count upon it'.
They turned, and looked to each other, each one seeing the spectre of a nightmarish future looming in front of them, a future so hellish it would leave the present nothing more than a pleasant memory.
Diego ran.
Over the scorched and blackened earth he ran, feeling the wind howl and whip through his hair, letting the primitive senses direct him away from dangers, leaping trenches, his eyes half-closed against the stinging, dust-filled air.
With a last, convulsive sprint, he powered ahead as he saw the dugout where Kasson and Viconia were supposed to be. He jumped the dugout, collapsing into a panting, blown-out heap even as a bayonet poked him in the ribs.
Slowly, with exaggerated caution, he turned. Four renegades appraised him back. Their uniforms were uniformly filthy, spattered with mud and other, less identifiable substances, hung with grotesque sigils, spikes and fetishes. Their faces were utterly white with fatigue under the filth, their eyes unfocused and glassy from drugs. Diego blinked at their leader, a man covered in ritual scars and tattoos, his eyes blood-red with chem frenzy, his arm severed from the forearm and replaced with a motorised chain blade which was slowly idling into life.
'Where's Kasson?' asked Diego, praying feverently the shaking in his legs wasn't visible.
'Who?' snarled the leader, advancing, step after step, backing Diego to the wall.
'Kasson' said Diego, trying to look the murderous thug in the eyes despite his fear.
'E must think we're Imperials, like 'im' drawled another of the renegades, a wiry man who hefted a crude trench knife in each hand, blood still fresh on a eight-pointed sigils carved into the flesh of his cheek. 'Well, boy, looks like you dropped into the wrong-' he stopped, catching sight of the long las slung over Diego's back.
'Well, well' leered the thug, his visage further distorted by the Khornate icon carved onto his cheek. 'Looks like we caught one of the bastards 's been trying after our 'eads. Well, my lad' he said, all traces of mock-friendliness vanishing. 'You are gonna regret the day you ever, ever set foot on my 'ome. I'm gonna bleed you like a-'
'What in the lower hells in going on here!?' roared Kasson, the irate engineer sweeping into the dugout and interposing himself between Diego and the renegades. 'Not only do you fools skive off working on my defences, you bloody well go about threatening your superiors at that!? Who in name of those pathetic gods you worship do you think you are!?'
'He came in here like-'
'Like a what, you pathetic little man!? You mean he caught you napping on your Kalma high, and you thought he was an imperial! You stupid grox-lovers, if the Imperials attacked here you bastards would be dead before you could get off you lazy arses! Now get back to work!'
'Sir, we were just-'
'Don't give me bloody excuses, you greasy heretic. Get back to work.'
'But sir, we was-'
'You worthless filth if you don't get back to work I'll rip your ears from your head!' screamed Kasson, now inches from the unwashed face of the chaos worshipper.
The renegades disappeared into the trenches.
'Looters, rats and the scum of the army, and that's saying something in this place' grumbled Kasson. 'How are you Diego?'
'I'm fine' said Diego, though in truth it would be a long time until the pounding in his ears subsided. 'Look, Kasson-'
'Aren't you and Emir meant to be picketing?'
'Yes, but look. Emir's found out something, we need to get in touch with the boss.'
'What?'
'They're trying to open a warp gate.'
Both men turned, to see Emir standing over the parapet, looking out over the battlefield. Kasson looked bemused, looking between Emir and Diego in confusion, until understanding finally dawned, draining his ruddy complexion to a sickly, pallid white.
'Oh no.'
Thunder rolled.
As if on cue, lightning blasted through the air, the incandescent, indescribable energy exploding across the sky in a blazing caphocany of destructive force. Out of the side hatch of a Valkyrie transport, Colonel Siegfried von Luckner watched the sky erupting into a criss-cross of burning white. His lined, scarred face creased in an ironic smile as he watched the heavens rip themselves apart. Like an apocalyptic overture to a personal Armageddon, he thought.
'- And we'll be at the RV in T minus twelve!' the co-pilot yelled, trying to make his voice heard over the din of the thunder.
Von Luckner nodded, eyes still fixed on the terrible magnificence of the thunderstorm. His bodyguards remained silent too, grim and fearless as Mordian custom dictated. He could still remember Kasson's voice over the vox, the static distorting his flat, guttural tones failed to hide the leaden, dead fear ringing like a funeral bell in every syllable.
?You?ve got to find the boss,? he had said. ?Somebody out there?s trying to open up a warp gate.?
?Who!?? von Luckner remembered snarling, involuntarily pacing the dugout like an animal caught in a trap.
?We don?t know? Kasson replied, voice leaden with fatigue and suppressed fear. ?Could be Eldar, could easily be one of the renegade commanders, trying to open up the lines for us. Hell, for all we know it?s the bloody Necrons on the warpath, and wouldn?t that just be a sodding appropriate end to this campaign. It?s been a long time since we?ve had a planet shot out from under us.?
?I bet it?s Palati? von Luckner said, hot rage curling up in his chest as he paced the dugout. ?That renegade bastard couldn?t wait another day to open up the lines, so he-?
?Not sure about that? muttered Kasson into the vox. ?He struck me as smart commander, did Palati. I doubt it was him.?
?We?ll see. Von Luckner out?
A few hours ago, he had been sitting in a comfortable, warm dugout, a glass of Amsac warming in his grip as he entertained his line officers to dinner. Now he was ten thousand feet up, in the company of several tons of ordnance and high explosives, watching lightning brush past his nose. Silently he cursed Drang for dragging him out here, cursed Kasson for discovering the warp gate, cursed the malformed whoreson of a chaos spawn for building it, cursed the Emperor for abandoning him to the service of a psychotic and a witch even as the Valkyrie began its slow descent to the foot of the barren mound.
The whine of the engines increased, the vectored exhausts glowing red as the pilot brought it down to a foot above the ground level, the massive engine howling with the effort of keeping the fifteen-ton flyer hovering a metre above ground. Overhead, the remainder of the squadron circled like a pack of malevolent iron buzzards, door gunners peering out into the pre-dawn gloom for signs of enemy activity.
Von Luckner looked up the hill as he leapt from the rear ramp of the Valkyrie, his staff and engineer team disembarking before the massive flyer hoisted itself back into the sky to join the circling squadron. Massive, black and ominous in the night sky, it seemed to stretch up into space itself- the gleaming metal of Inquisitor Tyrus's ruined star ship the only hint that the mound simply did not go on forever into the inky black.
Blinking rapidly, he realised he was standing alone. Looking about, he saw a pale, naked hand wave at him from a shallow trench. He sprinted, and dropped into the depression beside Kasson and Emir.
'Anyone up there?' he hissed, the harsh words nearly drowned by the howl of the next Valkyrie's descent.
'I don't know' replied Kasson, waving the mercenaries to a firing position further up the hill. 'Emir tried to get an image of the area, but something's blocking her. I don't know what it is though. Have another breath' he said, offering the Kalma pack to Emir again.
Von Luckner frowned. Whatever was up on that hill was projecting a field of nauseating fury of such strength it was not only blocking Emir's psychic vision, but had begun to churn even his Chaos-inured Mordian senses. Behind him, the mercenaries disembarked and ran to their positions, bristling with weaponry and deadly purpose as they advanced.
Point by point the mercenaries moved up the hill, each squad taking a fire position and holding it while their comrades took the next one up. An observer would have noted the loping, catlike gait of the warriors, the manner in which their weapons remained fixed at their next positions even as they moved over rough and broken ground.
Panting, Von Luckner threw himself over the embanked crest of the hill, leveling his plasma pistol before him, and-
Stared.
In front of him, around the wreckage and ruin of the Imperial cruiser, was a solitary, black blade. A soft, ruddy glow lit the scene, bathing the hollow wreck in a glow red as blood. Lines of an eight-pointed circle thrust out from the weapon, a hellish, gory brilliance.
'Daemonsword' he whispered.
Drang awoke.
A few moments of blissful, numb awareness, then the senses came flooding back. A hundred cuts and lacerations howled along the length of his body, from minor scrapes of shredded skin and bruised flesh, to a long, deep cut reaching from his chest to his thigh, the blood oozing onto the ground as he arched his back and screamed.
The sound tore through the air, the pain and fear so laden in the ether it seemed to twist and warp around it, the resonant, pregnant silence following on like a monster, lurking just out of sight but still there, talons and fangs leering out from the dark places of the mind.
Fifty yards away, Emir's gasp cut through the night air, her already ivory complexion draining to a brilliant, terrified white.
Drang stood, unsteady on his feet. He clamped his eyes shut, desperately trying to block out the terrible images replaying themselves before his eyes. He shook his head, desperately trying to block out the memories of him- him, lashing out and feeling human flesh yield under his blow, watching a man crumple screaming as his organs spilled out onto the hard, cold ground. Him, laughing as he felt human bone snap under his hands, watching his victim's eyes as they widened in fear, then terror, then finally the numb, paralytic shock of a prey animal as it dies, glorying in the vicious, murderous euphoria of it all, his own mind delighting in each and every cruel, malevolent barbarity, his own soul urging him on to more depraved, savage acts.
It's just the drugs, he thought, desperately shaking his head. You were tanked on Psychon, that wasn't you. Drugs and your own fears and that bastard Daemonsword.
Do not delude yourself, came the ever-present voice. Whether it was Agronmari or just his own mind, Drang could not tell. You love the killing. You celebrate it so not because of drugs or possession, but because it is your nature to celebrate it, to smell the fear and taste the blood. You are the killer here. Those are merely your servants- nothing more than an aide to strengthen you in your weaker moments.
'I didn't ask your opinion!' Drang screamed to the opaque, ruddy gloom.
And yet here I am, it replied, now smug and suffused with a inexorable, glutted contentment. Or rather, here we are-once again, surrounded by your handiwork- and rather good handiwork, I must say. Do stop arguing with yourself, dear Kamenev. As much as you protest your loathing of violence, as much as you delude yourself as to you 'good' nature, it remains that every time we should speak we are ere atop a mountain of dead and dying.
Pretentious bastard, thought Drang, staggering over the concrete floor as he tried to get his bearings. A dark, reddish-black haze obscured the rest of the battlefield, with the frontlines and gun pits that stretched east of the rolling mound invisible to him. Still, he continued on, one slow, ponderous lurch after the other, desperately trying to place one foot in after the last in a long, trudging amble towards what he hoped were the frontlines.
So intent was he on his march, that he did not notice the subtle change in the air around him. He barely even noticed the glimmer of burnished metal in the fog around him.
His melancholy was interrupted however, when he was forced to notice the attentions of those around, as he nearly trudged on to the point of a Nemesis force weapon
Drang screamed as the force halberd tore across his chest, tearing a hideous, smooth red line across his torso, before he ducked and rolled away, the actinic roar of his shock maul sending a familiar, evil thrill down his spine.
The enemy paused, before leaping at Drang, swinging the blade around in a vicious arc intended to tear out his entrails. Drang sneered and stepped inside the armoured figure's guard, the helmeted head snapping up in cold, brutal realisation before Drang's elbow smashed into his face, blood and shattered bone exploding inside the tight confines of powered armour as the inquisitor's nose shattered under the impact.
Drang lingered to watch his foe drop, the wet, final thump of metal into mud provoking another familiar, malevolent surge of pleasure even as he whipped round, bringing his mace around in a lethal, whistling arc to shatter the carapace armour of a sword-wielding killer, shattering bone and flesh into unrecognisable pulp despite the ornate, beautiful armour and heroic courage.
'For the Dark Gods!' he howled, charging headlong into a rank of terrified storm troopers. Supremely disciplined, they levelled their weapons, as one tracking the terrifying blur that-
Smashed aside their bodies like toys, three men sent hurtling through the air already limp and bloody even as Drang lashed out, laughing with psychotic, animal glee as he wrought death and destruction amidst the inquisition's footmen. A knife blade slashed passed his chest, tearing another incarnadine line across his flesh, before his armoured fist shattered the man's jaw into a thousand fragments, an inarticulate scream muffled in his ruined face as he dropped to the earth. Another, a sergeant by his looks, swung a blazing power sword at him. Drang smashed his blow aside with contemptuous ease, before seizing the hapless figure and pulling him close, savouring his incoherent, mindless terror, watching beautiful, hazel-brown eyes contract in fear before slamming wide open, Drang's knife ramming into the man's groin. He dropped the sergeant, the man screaming as his lifeblood spurted and leaked out through his fingers.
Inured to pain, and mad with frenzy, Drang tore his fellow humans apart with sadistic abandon, dealing out the pains of his life, the injustices, the self-loathing and the fear onto the soldiers. How ironic, he thought, that the same fears and pain the inquisition had used to turn Kamenev Drang, a normal young man, into a bloodthirsty, murderous killer. And how delightfully, bitterly ironic, that this depraved monstrosity they had sought for their own power was now the cruel, nightmarish figure that shattered bones and tore flesh.
Drang finished disposing of the last storm trooper, watching his body thrash and writhe as the acid of an inferno round ate into his body, dissolving flesh and incinerating nerve endings as one hapless, agonised one man watched another cavort in pain.
And he laughed, a howling, booming noise that tore across the entire battlefield, a horrific caphocany that roared of death, savage, cruel and utterly implacable.
'Oh, he breathed. ' That we but teach bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague the inventor!" he cried, malevolent delight in the sheer, peverse, cruel irony of life.
'Sturm und Drang!'
With a hollow, booming thud, a heavy mortar round slammed into the black earth of a crater wall twelve feet from Drang, the impact spewing filthy, bloody mud high into the air. Drang looked up from his position, his face smeared in the same thick, glutinous mix of earth and human flesh, as, instead of exploding, the bomblet began to hiss violently. Smoke billowed up from the shell, filling the air with foul, murky gloom. As more rounds landed amongst the empty space of no-mans land, the wafting darkness writhed and swirled above the scorched earth, and a cloak of unnatural darkness fell over the world.
'"And out went the candle, and we were left in darkling"' Drang murmured to himself, the horrible familiarity of the darkness sweeping down into his mind and dredging up a name.
Inquisitor Volke.
Covered from his boots to his neck in filth and dried gore, Drang stood. All around him, grey smoke circled like the vengeful hounds of the Emperor. Noise echoed behind him, and he spun. Out of the smoke loomed a figure, slender and lethal in her movements. He recognised her even as the bolt pistol left it's holster and whistled through the air, even her's swept up and levelled at his forehead. Reflex brought the weapon this far, but even as the impulse to squeeze the trigger began, the sheer, it crashed headlong into an insurmountable, glacial prescience. The vital spark stayed unshorted, and even the chemical frenzy sputtered and died as it demanded actions so utterly alien to Drang, so repulsive and unnatural, it was physically impossible.
He looked over the sight of the gun, into sapphire-blue eyes he knew so well.
'Did I ever tell you,' Drang whispered to Emir 'that I love you'.
Bringing the cold metal up, he leant forward, and kissed her.
How long it lasted, none can know. For Drang and Emir, it was a lifetime's peace and painful tenderness stolen for a few, brief seconds from the jaws of War himself. Viconia and Diego, watching through the cool gaze of a scope, would have sworn it was a minute of beauty more potent than all the miserable barbarity surrounding it. Kasson said it was two people's prelude to more interesting things, but nobody paid any attention to the dog-like sergeant unless he was shouting.
The rest of the mercenaries said nothing, or at least nothing that could be heard over their madcap, raucous cheering as they flooded into the depression, slapping their leader on the back and howling with the sheer, joyous relief of it all. Relief at having found him, at knowing that now, now, there would be direction, and order, and that the dead and the hurt would have the solace of a purpose.
Drang broke the kiss first, pulling back to lose himself in those wonderful eyes, now liquid with tears that streaked away the dirt.
Emir smiled again, not the pained, half-grimace but a genuine, small smile that lit her features better that the stars.
As they held each other, the mercenaries formed a strange, disorderly system as men took it in turns to picket the battle until each had congratulated their leader, before peeling off to watch the horizon. Kasson moved amongst them, dealing out curses and kicks with his usual merciless abandon even as Von Luckner strode through the heavy mob to slap Drang on the shoulder and speak:
'Damn it Kam, I never thought I'd say this, but I am glad to see you' said the old Mordian.
'Thanks Siegfried' murmured Drang, his voice somewhat muffled as he and Emir clung to one another.
Von Luckner smiled, and turned away to organise the defence even as the slow bombardment petered out, unnoticed.
'You did' whispered Emir, the words so soft that you couldn't hear the rasping from the scar tissue.
Drang made a quizzical noise a few inches from her ear, unwilling to sacrifice even a few moments of closeness.
'You told me you loved me'
There are some moments so beautiful they are simply beyond expression. Some emotions that can't be named beyond a certainty that despite the fear, despite the pain, despite nursing someone through nightmares and terror, despite watching love glut itself on death until the heart should tear and break, despite all the blood and hell and madness the universe can dredge up, despite it all, that you know that life is beautiful.
At this moment, the world tore, and burned.
The sky seemed to crack. Shellfire exploded across the broken land, fire and destruction tearing into earth, flesh and bone alike as the wrath of the Emperor spoke.
Drang clutched at Emir, holding her quivering, slight form into him while the blind fury erupted about them. Shrapnel tore his back, rivulets of hot blood running down his flesh and over Emir's hands as he tried to shield her.
Don't want to let you go, he spoke into the quiet space between their minds.
Don't she replied.
Drang sent out a unvoiced query into her mind, and tasted a strange bitterness in the space between. Before he could probe further, Emir's presence swept it away, suffocating that terrible, foreboding emotion in a single instant of panicked reflex.
Just hold me a little longer was the only reply. Just a little longer, please he heard, feeling the same, strange calmness he had sensed a moment before in her desperate plea.
His only response was to hold her closer, the two figures holding one another so tightly it bordered on physical pain.
How long the embrace held is irrelevant. Certainly, it was enough time for the blasts to tear Drang's back into shreds, soaking the wool of his greatcoat with blood, though he felt little of the pain. Certainly, it was enough to tax Emir's shield around them, for when Drang felt her gently move away and look up at him, her face was drawn with exhaustion, sweat smearing the grime on her forehead.
Emir smiled again, a small, half-grimace that tore the heart of the tall, dark haired figure she stared up at, the subtle, beautiful grey of his eyes. His expression shifted, and for a moment fear tore at Emir's soul, fear that the elegant, kind lines were going to reshape themselves into that terrible, inhuman visage. But the vital spark stayed unshorted, and those cool, smiling eyes asked the question the voice did not.
'Kiss me' she whispered, her voice breaking with emotion.
Drang's eyes, those warm, cloud grey eyes, widened a little. A precious second passed, before he swept down, slowly, tenderly to-
Kiss lips not there, as Sergeant-Major Dirk Kasson slammed his elbow into the side of Emir's skull, knocking her off balance. His gauntleted fist hammered into Drang's sternum, knocking the wind out of him as he grabbed the slight psychic and threw her to the floor. Shock lent him a few moments, before the world around them exploded in gout of flame. The blast hit him like the fist of the gods, cracking two of his ribs and sucking the air from his lungs as the inferno erupted over their heads.
Kasson rolled, expecting to see his commander descend on him mad with killing frenzy, to shatter bones and draw blood before he could explain himself. Instead, it was Emir's fist that came down like the wrath of the mad gods, his nose breaking with a sickening crack of cartilage on bone. His howl of pain was cut off as Emir slammed her fist into his mouth, clipping the top of one of his teeth and snapping it in half.
He grabbed for her hands, for he knew full well what she could do to him if she lost what restraint was left, and her psychic powers unleashed.
'You bastard!' she screamed. 'You stupid, grovelling blunt bastard!'
Kasson snapped, and unleashed a hammer-like blow that smashed into her jaw line. He felt something break under his fist, and Emir fell back onto the earth.
He closed his eyes, bracing himself for the horrible witchcraft he knew was coming, every nerve screaming in terror as he cringed away from the psychic apocalypse about to erupt.
But it did not. Instead, through his terror, he heard something far worse. Sobs. Quiet, gasping little sobs of someone in so much pain that she lay on the floor, curled in a ball in the cold mud as she cried. Brief, horrible shudders ran up and down her body like convulsive lightning even as her sobbing tore at his heart. Emir lay there, her weeping unable to express the full, venomous horror that lay in her heart.
Kasson crawled to her side, sympathetic tears wetting his cheeks as he felt his heart would burst from the pain he had somehow caused, watching Emir's cheekbone reshape itself under a faint corona of psychic energy. The healing completed itself, but the knife's edge never dropped from her tears that rolled from blank, terrified eyes.
'Sssh' he whispered, afraid to touch her for fear of exacerbating the nightmarish, life-draining sorrow that engulfed her. 'Sssssh' he repeated, screwing his courage up and placing a tentative hand on her muddy, tattered long hair.
Her sobbing continued, as if she were trying to weep her life's essence out into the lifeless mud she lay in. Finally, Kasson gathered her up in his arms and held her, an act of absolute desperation as he tried hold back the grief that cut like a razor's blade. Swallowing his revulsion, he tried to comfort the witch as she wept her misery-sodden heart out.
Finally, the sobs quietened, and Emir disengaged from his arms like she had done from Drang's not so long ago, sitting back on her knees as if praying to a god-Emperor long forsaken. She looked into his eyes, seeing the confusion and fear sitting just below the surface of his mind. He looked back, into beautiful sapphire stars ringed with blood and nearly mad with the awful, acid sadness in her mind. A brief moment, and Kasson looked away, his distrust of psychics overcoming the sympathy he felt.
'I'm sorry Dirk' she began, keeping her voice even despite the hot, nauseating pain sitting in the pit of her stomach 'but you don't understand what you've done. You don't understand' she repeated, and the rest was strangled as she broke down, sobbing helplessly. Kasson could only look on helplessly, his own fear holding him prisoner, unable to leave, but incapable of helping.
When Emir recovered again, he spoke.
'I'll admit, I don't understand. I don't understand why you and him were standing around like that, like you couldn't see the bombs. Like you didn't care anymore. Like you-' he paused, voice swallowing itself as he gathered up his bravado once again. 'Like you were trying to die.'
Emir looked at him, and slowly, a smile spread over her face. A smile so cold, and pained that it took Kasson's breath away. The smile widened, and Emir threw her head back and laughed- mad, terrible laughter that tore at the storm clouds overhead, ripping the air into pieces from the sheer agony it held. Fresh tears streamed down her cheeks, two, brilliant lines of white against the filth covering her face. Kasson sat there, frozen as he realised how close Emir was to total, abject insanity.
Slowly, her laughter died, it's cold, ringing tones dying like the bombardment, slowing to a stop with the same, terrible slowness as a glacier buries a mountain. Her head came back down, and Kasson gasped again at the blind, hellish fury in her eyes. As cold and inhuman as the depths of space, two sapphire orbs that burned with barely contained power.
'Quite right Sergeant. That was not deluded romance, nor was it fear. At least, not as you would think it.'
'That was out last chance to die together.'
With a kind of fascinated, peverse detachment, Viconia swept the battlefield from her lofty perch atop a ruined chapel spire, the twisted, blackened metal and shattered masonery clutching around her slight form like a iron fist thrust up into the sky. It was moments like this, she deceided, that made life so worthwhile; looking down on her friends and enemies alike in the manner of a god, invisible, but able to reach out and save, or end a life with the soft, slow click of a metal trigger. Idly, she brought the long, familiar muzzle of a sniper's weapon around to bear on the smoke haze lifting over the shallow deppression the rest of the mercenaries held, watching the murk clear as the smoke shells sputtered out. Eyes open and slightly out of focus, searching the lifting fog of war for a target, she let her conscious mind wander, and instinct unchain itself for the hunt.
Yes, only the Gods had a better view of this war, a cinema scope of human stupidity and barbarity laid over a broken landscape of craters, scorched earth and human bodies.
Viconia sighed ruefully, wondering at her own undoubtly unnatural fascination with the phenomena of conflict, cool satisfaction laid over a quiet, venomous guilt at that calm superiroity. A pacifist who watches men die, she thought, black, icy bitterness rushing over her as she took aim.
'V?' her earpiece crackled with the warm, rolling tones of her partner Diego, twelve metres below and three hundred to the right of her but whispering into her ear like her was hunched over her crouched form.
'I'm here' she said, luxuriantly drawing the words out like the cat-like stretch she couldn't enjoy, muscles humming in protest at the tautness forced upon them. The only reply was the small, grinding noise of armour plating softly rubbing against stone. She grinned, imagining Diego shifting in discomfort as her sultry tone took effect.
A brief silence followed, and Diego spoke again, his voice only slightly more strained than previously.
'Smoke's clearing.'
'I see. Looks like-hold on, I can see something' Viconia replied, pressing the cold metal of an optical sight against the soft, warm flesh of surrouding her eyes. Muted, indistinct flashes erupted in the smoke cloud, and, moments later, a booming roll like thunder swept over them, more force than noise in it's fury.
'Artillery fire' she said, tones suddenly crisp and edged with fear. 'Just off to your west, about-
'-I see it' was the reply, tension balancing on Diego's tongue like the edge of a razor.
Viconia watched, as the battlefield cleared to a sudden, terrible clarity with a grotesque, elegant sweep not even the devil himself could choreograph, the smoke disappearing into the ether and allowing her to watch the destruction unfold.
'Oh, hell' Diego snapped, his eyes watching Drang and Emir cling together in the unfolding firestorm.
'Kasson.'
'This is Kasson' barked the tones of the burly, thickset Kreigsman.
'The boss and the witch are trying to kill themselves. Just left of you-'
'Shit, what in the name of all that is holy are they playing at?'
'I do not know,' he growled, his nerves howling with confused panic 'but get them the hell out of there, or we are-'
'Shafted' interrupted Kasson.
Diego watched the blonde, close-cropped skull pull itself up from the burnt ground and race, trench coat flying out behind him to where the two figures stood. He watched, grimacing as Kasson knocked the slight Alpha-class psyker to the ground. He watched, helpless, as the shockwave of a mortar bomblet lifted Drang and hurled him away like a dead leaf in a hurricance.
And froze, as the last of the haze lifted.
Both eyes opened, and the man stared up at the sky. A nightmarish, twisting maelstrom of dead, black clouds wreathed in a inferno of lightning stared back at him. He smiled, watching the coruscating fury dance and burn above him with a detached sense of malevolent glee, as white fires of vengeful destruction cracked and thundered overhead.
How long he lay there, in comforting, warm numbness, he did not know. He knew he could not lie there for too long- how he knew that, he did not know- but the imperative to move cried out in the privacy of his head, growing into a singular caphocany that, eventually, compelled him to stand.
He stood, and his vision swam, his head spinning horribly at the dislocation of his senses. Colour drained from his vision, reducing the world to a strange, alien monochrome. Lights flashed in the distance around him, flickering, greyish flames lighting in the corner of his eye as he looked around him. No fear entered his mind, but rather, a strange, liquid calm that he tested, querying, and found to be not fear, but tense, irrational anticipation even as the muted thunder of explosions erupted around him.
Something called to him through the disordered haze of his thoughts. He turned, and saw a figure, clad in ornate, black power armour stride towards him. He cocked his head in confusion, unable to hear her words through the blanketing, soft layer he seemed to be immersed in.
The woman strode on, and, two steps from him, drew out her sword and slashed it across his ribcage, the ferocity cutting through flesh and grinding against bone.
The impact threw him through the air, landing with the audible crack of shattered ribs through his body. His cool, monochrome vision flickered, drained and died as the pain rushed in.
A second later, Kamenev Drang awoke.
Colours swept back in to his vision, the muted rumble of shellfire became an indescribable caphocany as his hearing returned to it's full, nascent power as adrenaline surged through his body, catalysing a series of potent, electrochemical reactions as the blades of indescribable agony scraped and burned along his nerve endings. The dull copper taste of blood mixed with the acid already risen from his throat. The stink of gore, powder and burnt flesh assailed his senses even as brilliant, incandescent rage exploded in his mind.
In a single, inhuman motion he exploded from the mud, his massive, gore-spattered figure sweeping up to seize the Inquisitress by the throat in his right arm, his left seizing her right and idly snapping it. The blue-steel of the sword hit the ground with a soft, wet thump. Drang watched as her eyes warped and shifted in convulsions of agony, two soft, brown orbs locked onto the inky, daemonic black as his pupils dilated so grotesquely that all of his eyes were black.
Deranged laughter bubbled up in his throat as she thrashed in his grip, helpless. With a howl of triumph, he tossed her aside, her armoured body hitting the ground with the same wet thump as her blade. Ignoring her soft, agonised gasps, Drang reached down and lifted the strange, elegant blade from the ground. The muck and filth slid off it as he lifted, unable to gain a purchase of the slick, ethereal blue metal.
Malleus Malefactorum, he read.
Hammer of the witches.
Witch-Hunter's blade.
Witch-Hunter.
Oh gods, Emir! Terror exploded throughout his psyche like a fire through dead grass as he madly groped for the familiar connection in the back of his mind.
Nothing.
Desperately, he tried again. Nothing. That same, tender presence that had sat on the edge of his thoughts for so long, so utterly central, integral and part of him, so familiar and so calming-
Gone.
Near-crazed with terror, Drang groped for reasons. It must be the witch-hunters. Yes, they're responsible for this- they're using something to block the connection, that must be it. Emir's not dead- she can't be dead, oh dear immortal bastard Emperor she can't be dead, not Emir, not Emir of all the people you've left me.
Wait, spoke the cold, deadly presence from the rational core of his being. Emir was frightened of something.
Drang voiced silent agreement.
And she could sometimes see the future. It pointed out. What was she frightened of? Whatever it was, it was big enough for her to hide it from you.
So she foresaw her own....her own....damn it, no! Drang snarled, head snapping back and forth in incoherent denial. You think she saw her, that she saw her-
It fits.
Silence! Drang screamed inside the confines of his mind, the visions of his nightmares rising up and overwhelming him.
Something glinted on the floor. Cold, gleaming in the lights of the fires around, Drang lifted it up. A small, twisted piece of metal, at once so familiar, and so horrible, a few strands of raven-black hair still caught in it's clasp, and the wonderful scent of Emir mixed with the corrosive, sickening odour of blood, and death.
His knees wavered and buckled, gorge rising in his throat as he fought to hold off the implacable, unstoppable conviction that Emir was, was, was-
Dead.
The fragile defences of his mind crumpled like a gunshot victim under the onslaught. Grief swept over him, engulfing his consciousness in a wave of misery, pain and utter despair. Mad with the pain, he sought refuge in memory. But still the grotesque, inexpressible pain followed, wedging it's venomous blade into the cracks in his mind and calling up those memories he wished so desperately to forget. Those few, tender moments- brushing hair back from her face, a small, secret smile- the moments that are for the dark, painful times became so hateful to him, each one tearing at him with all the pain, and acid venom of true misery.
Unable to hold back any longer, he lifted his head to the madness overhead, and howled.
