"We called it the Traveller. An A.I, a Machine, a God, in the end it mattered little what we called it. When Mankind emerged from the darkest period of its history, the Third and Fourth World Wars of the 23rd century, we found it.

Or it found us, I know not. The space agencies of the time picked up massive energy signatures on the planet Mars, and a manned expedition was dispatched to investigate. Even before these brave pioneers gazed upon the great white sphere, they understood they'd found something special.

For it was raining on the red planet.

The Traveller gifted us with so many things, its knowledge, its technology...its Light. Human life spans quadrupled, and our ruined world was made green once more. With the discovery of warp, we spread beyond the confines of our Earth and orbiting space stations to every corner of Sol.

And the Traveller went with us, taking pleasure from watching us grow and walk among the stars. It made the hostile to all life Venus a garden paradise. Cities sprang up on Mars, on Luna, on every world we and the Traveller touched.

Mankind's future seemed brighter than any could have possibly imagined.

However, the Traveller had an enemy, an ancient evil that had followed it across the black void of space for eons, spreading slaughter and shadow. And after four hundred years it found us.

A Darkness with a name: The Hive.

Those who lived to build anew from the apocalypse they wrought upon us, would call it "the Collapse."

Only through the Traveller's sacrifice was the horror of the Darkness driven back. But before that moment of pure compassion for us, there was what seemed like an eternity of misery, suffering and cruelty at the hands of an enemy that knew neither mercy or pity.

XXX

6th of December, 2680 AD, Greater Slavic Federation, Russia, Moscow Cosmodrome

The grey tarmac snaked through the snow-capped Russian landscape like a vast and fat serpent. Lamp posts, blazing car headlights and the twinkling stars themselves, high above in that sea of black, illuminated the seething mass of traffic both mechanical and human.

Up ahead, was a massive grey slab of steel, a mighty bulwark against any attacker. Built to protect this place, the Wall now shielded those who passed through its open doors and military pickets. Beyond it, a vast stretch of open land, on which presided a gargantuan space port that now played host to hundreds of thousands of Refugee tents.

The Moscow Cosmodrome had once been a glorious beacon of the nation's prestige, now it was likely the Russian people's last sanctuary from the horror beyond the stars.

"Come on...come on..." The middle-aged man ran a hand through his hair as the beeping of car horns grew louder. His little car, a thirty-year-old Petrenko Primus, was his pride and joy. The boxy, ugly, cream vehicle had endeared itself to him beyond measure; this was fortunate, as it cost him a proverbial arm and a leg even all those years ago.

It was quite reflective of Humanity's inherent imperfection that in this Golden Age, there were still farmers who only just made ends meet, whilst many across Sol had lived the high life. All that however, was now at an end.

"Being grumpy with it isn't going to work." Anatoly Mendevev's wife scolded.

"It makes me feel better." He grumbled, beeping his horn again.

"Oh let him, mother. Everyone needs something to make them feel better these days." The young man cramped in the back added, tiredly yawning afterwards.

The woman who'd birthed him, Diana Mendevev, exchanged a knowing look with her husband.

"Says the twenty-year-old who complains whenever I make him do his ironing?" They chuckled at that, whilst their son, Dimitri, leaned back into his seat and rolled his eyes.

"I don't complain, I'm just busy with University work."

"Busy he says. As if he doesn't spend enough time on that game station or whatever-" Anatoly snorted, laughing slightly.

"It's not called a game station, father, it's a-"

"Oh zatk'nis, Dimitri. I know, I know-" The older man was saying before Diana cuffed him round the ears.

"Language!" She chastised.

Dimitri smiled bemusedly, all of this very much being in character for his parents. His mother was a small woman with intelligent emerald eyes, long chocolate brown hair and a soft and pointed face. She'd grown up as a socialite in Saint Petersburg then fell for his father, a bulky man heralding from the farms around Moscow who towered over his wife.

Anatoly was square faced, big nosed, and small eyed, a mop of greying black hair crowning his head. By god, his piercing blue eyes had terrified Dimitri enough when he was little, despite the fact he'd inherited them.

Yet the man was completely under Diana's foot; many was the time when Dimitri and Anatoly had to hide in their barn whilst she paced around shouting their names when they'd done something wrong. Occasionally if they were lucky, she would let them cower. Nowadays of course he knew his father, the man he got his hair and eyes from, to be a truly soft and kind person, the near opposite to his equally kind but iron-willed mother, from whom he'd got his nose.

As for his own face, Dimitri's was a mixture of his parents. Clearly masculine, yet soft and pointed like his mother's.

Their lives had been happy ones, before the apocalypse came down upon Humanity's head. The farm, their home, was likely being torched by unspeakable horrors from another world at that very moment.

There had been such excitement when the first crackling images from a satellite orbiting Pluto came back to the colonies and Earth, of strange black ships glowing a green light. A diplomatic envoy was sent immediately, approaching these vessels head on; they received only one transmission in a tongue that none understood, before they were obliterated.

At that moment, the Traveller, that which had brought their Golden Age, suddenly lifted off into the air and made for the outer reaches of the system. Many religions wailed about how, "judgement was upon them" but few listened. Even then…it was quite the shock for Mankind.

A battle group was soon dispatched, specifically the 2nd Martian fleet. They engaged the enemy vessels over Titan and despite sustaining heavy losses, they destroyed the foe.

As Humanity was soon to discover however, this was merely a scout fleet. Much larger groups of larger alien vessels soon appeared, the warp signature of something truly massive following them.

Across the alien comms, the word Oryx, Oryx, Oryx was chanted again and again, as if praising some all-powerful deity. And then ten thousand ships dropped out of warp directly on top of Mercury; the whole populace and all its defences were massacred in a day. At the heart of this armada was a vessel unlike any other yet seen. Estimates varied, but it appeared to be thousands of miles long at the very least.

Every defence, every world crumbled before this horde. Now, only a ring of iron made from battleships and orbital defence platforms stood between the aliens and Earth herself. The various governments of Man had ordered their peoples into vast bunkers in which they could ride out this storm. And it was to one of these, that Dimitri and his family were currently heading.

The traffic was ridiculous, being as thick and viscous as honey left in the cold. After two hours, tempers came close to boiling over.

"Ugh, can't they do this any more efficiently?" Anatoly growled, beeping his horn again and a tapping a finger on the steering wheel.

"These roads weren't built for this volume of traffic, dear. Accept it." Diana tried to keep the situation under control, even then she couldn't stop her jaw tightening. Suddenly, above the din of car horns and revving engines, another noise slowly rose from far away.

"What the..." Dimitri trailed off as he recognized it.

It was a siren.

Soon that shrill, synthetic shriek was joined by the dull thuds of heavy AA opening up on an incoming enemy. Eventually yet inexorably, people began to spill out of their cars as both on radio and loudspeakers a military sounding voice barked, "Leave your vehicles, enemy ships are en-route."

"How the hell...what on Earth is the fleet doing-" His words died in his mouth, when great burning hulks of battleships, destroyers, and carriers fell from the sky like macabre shooting stars.

"Blyat!" Dimitri hissed, ignoring his mother's chastisement and throwing the passenger door open. Chaos had enveloped the road ways as thousands of people scrambled over each other to reach safety, whilst some decided to risk off road in their cars.

From far away he could see two black ships glowing sickly green, closing on their position at an inhuman rate. The military would never be able to scramble jets in time to intercept them.

They won't get past the Wall though. He reassured himself. If they could just get past those defences, they'd be safe.

"We have to go, now!" He yelled desperately at his parents, who grasped the gravity of the situation quickly. They threw their doors open and began running with him, although as Dimitri was a young man he could effortlessly outpace them. He actually had to keep looking back, just to make sure they were still there.

The panicked screams of the vast crowd were drowned out by the ethereal shriek of alien engines, as from their sides, the black ships unleashed eight blasts of crackling purple energy. In that solid mass of people, there was no chance they could miss. Hundreds were vaporised by the impact, many more reduced to bloody mists by shrapnel.

Debris was scattered everywhere, and Dimitri barely avoided it by throwing himself to the ground. Slowly picking himself back up, the sobs of his mother caused him to freeze. Turning slowly around, his chest ached upon seeing Anatoly lie face down in the tarmac; the back part of his head...it wasn't there anymore.

Diana was weeping hysterically, trying to put her man's head back together in a futile display of grief. Her son had to snap himself out of his own inner numbness, as he barrelled back towards her, knowing full well she couldn't stay there.

The alien ships started dropping their troops; the screams of the innocent and the helpless grew ever louder. Mothers clutching their children in their arms hurtled past Dimitri whilst he frantically tried to push past the vast mass of humanity.

There was a cacophony of inhuman roars as the freshly landed unearthly monstrosities set upon their prey. All were skeletal in nature, but the smaller, paler ones were more numerous than their brethren who bore arcane fire arms. With claws and gnashing teeth, they shredded through the hapless herd, feasting on man, woman, and child.

What came behind them were slightly larger, gun wielding variants, with three hellish luminescent green eyes. A horrifying sight to behold in gangrenous armour that may well have been exo-skeleton, they unleashed a torrent of energy blasts, cutting down anyone in the way, including their own. What appeared to be their leader, who wielded a sword made more of bone than steel, whose helm was a pronounced three-pointed crest, dwarfed everything else.

He couldn't focus on that though; he could only fixate on the grunts of the enemy force closing on his mother. Instinctively as he ran, his fingers slipped around a shredded piece of metal from a car. It cut into his hand, but that was a positive in Dimitri's eyes.

It was sharp.

One of the skeletal creatures was upon the middle-aged woman now. She completely ignored it, so enraptured by grief that self-preservation didn't cross her mind. It jumped into the air, claws out stretched and ready to take the kill. That was until the upward slicing motion from Dimitri's "blade" cut its head apart vertically; its lifeless body snapped back and crashed into the ground.

The young man stood there for a moment, heart hammering, still comprehending what he'd done. The arrival of another enemy caused him to click back into action.

His mother could only look up in slight wonder as her son blocked the strike of another one of those skeletal, gnashing things, gashing his arm horribly in the process, before stabbing it in the face.

Two down, five quadrillion to go.

Satisfied the area was safe for the moment, Dimitri finally turned to the woman who carried him for nine months, arm covered in blood.

"Mother, we have to go." He choked up slightly, seeing his boisterous father lying so wrongly still.

"But I can't just leave him..." she whimpered, looking up at her son with puffy eyes.

"He'd want you to go."

Diana sat there for a few moments, shaking and breathing heavily before logic won through. Steadily getting to her feet, Dimitri soon clamped his hand around her wrist and sprinted, not letting go for a moment. There was not so much trouble now, as he was moving with the crowd instead of against it. It would be one hell of a run, but if they could keep up, keep moving, then perhaps they would reach safety after all.

XXX

A minute or so later, the leader of this alien band stopped and stared down at the two Thralls who lay dead, felled by the hands of a human.

How pathetic.

Nevertheless, there was a defiant and strong heart among that crowd. And as it was with all things in the universe, the strength of the Hive must break it before their own was broken, as according to the Sword Logic.

"Who did this?" The unproven Hive Knight boomed in its snarling tongue.

"One of the anathema's pets, my Lord. It went that way." An Acolyte pointed at the stampeding herd of disgustingly alive creatures.

"Do not interfere...it is mine." Sardon grinned, breaking into what his people deemed a, "brisk jog." One that could outstrip a sprinting cheetah with terrifying ease.

Prince Crota, may I gain a tasty morsel for your tribute this day!

All that stood in his way were simply slammed aside. Sardon smelt and sensed the world around him. Fear flooded his nostrils, much to his delight, the stench and taste of blood becoming elation.

Aiat, the glory of battle. The Sword Logic manifest...the sole truth of the universe...there. His rotting nostrils twitched.

A hundred metres ahead, he could smell, see and hear a young Human male who hauled along a middle-aged member of its kind. His arm and chest were smeared in the blood of Sardon's useless kin, a sharp piece of metal in his hand.

It stumped the ancient abomination, that this mere mortal had risen to the challenge and met with some success, whilst feeling less fear than those around him. Pondering what drove this Human to act the way he did, Sardon closed the gap, his blade scraping against the ground, increasing the intoxicating terror in the cattle around him.

It must be your mother. That is what drives you? Allow me to take it away...

XXX

He could feel Diana slowing down, her age catching up with her. Wheezing pants of, "just go on without me" were things he refused to heed. She was the only family he had left and Dimitri refused to lose it.

The screaming around him intensified as he felt the ground reverberate with the footsteps of something massive. He paid it no mind and increased his pace, only for his mother's grip to jolt back, her slicked with sweat wrist sliding off.

She's fallen, damn it!

He spun around. Time slowed to a crawl as his blue eyes bulged.

Diana was standing, her face frozen in surprise, fear and pain, a great blade of bone jammed through her chest. Sardon lifted her off the ground one armed; her trembling hands touched the tip of the blade that had taken her life. Gently, she lifted her gaze, fighting back the pain as she looked into her son's eyes, doing her best to reassure him.

"Run." She whispered. Then, with the mere flick of his wrist, Sardon flung Diana Mendevev through the air like a rag doll. She hit the ground hard, and rolled for a few moments until coming to rest on her back.

Lifeless green eyes gazing up at the stars.

Memories flooded into him, of bed time stories, hot chocolates in bed when the sun first poked through the window, of birthdays and Christmas, of scolding and reassurance. Dimitri's throat felt scratchy and his vision blurred, despair overcoming him.

Everything he knew was truly dead.

The hideous, three-metre-tall alien fixed its inhuman eyes on him, rotten teeth leering in triumph. Dimitri's lip pulled back into a snarl; howling in hatred, he charged, wielding his makeshift weapon with flailing rage.

He wasn't ready to die, but it was going to happen anyway. His whole family was gone. He had nothing now, yet he could use his life to buy time for those ahead of him. Soon, he would be with mother and father again, but first he'd put as many of these fucking foul things in the grave as possible-

The Hive Knight caught Dimitri's arm and plunged his blade through the twenty-year-old like a knife through butter. Blood cascaded from the Human's mouth as darkness enveloped his world, whilst Acolytes and Thralls surged past, making his sacrifice pointless.

I don't want to die.

The alien sneered at him and pushed the blade in deeper. Dimitri didn't have the energy left to scream, only cry.

I don't want to die.

It chattered and grunted in its strange language, sounding surprisingly impressed, before throwing the Russian straight into the side of a car.

"You are finer tribute than most, whelp, I shall give you that much." Sardon barked in the tongue of the Hive, then gestured as his servants. "He's all yours."

I don't want to die.

In a flash, the teeth of Thralls sank into the young man's flesh, ripping him apart piece by piece. And thus, Dimitri Mendevev went into his eternal sleep to the lullaby of his own death screams, the tearing of his muscle and skin, the splattering of his blood, and the crunching of his bones.

More tribute for the Worm Gods, another life for Oryx the Taken King.