A/N: Just a little story I've had brewing in the back of my mind for awhile, based off Black Library's Audio Drama The Glorious Tomb by Guy Haley. Its probably one of my favorite Warhammer stories out there and focuses a little bit on life as a Dreadnought, a superhuman warrior broken and entombed in a near unstoppable war machine to serve his Chapter and his Emperor until the end of his days. They also wind up inevitably separated from their brothers, among them, but apart at the same time. They become more relics than brothers and overtime they endure while those around them vanish.
Weird story for this one though, was originally supposed to be a Blood Raven Dreadnought during the events of DoWII but before writing this I finally bucked down and bought a decent PC and for kicks got SPACE MARINE when it was on sale, game looks freaking gorgeous and that it doesn't have a sequel in the works is a real shame. Anyway I wanted to try online play before playing much of the campaign (Smart I know...), its an old game so not a lot of people still play it. Somehow I managed to land on a full team of four and though these guys were vets, customized and kitted out, and I kept getting slaughtered as some base level one Ultramarine newbie (Only skin they gave you at that point). Thankfully, one of them was kind enough to show me how to go about things. Ended up playing for hours and had an awesome time.
This kind soul's username was Taranis Ormstooth, and he was flying about the map as a Space Wolf Assault Marine kiting orks, so I thought why not honor him. (And then shove his bitter broken body in a Dreadnought...but hey, FOR THE ALLFATHER and all that.)
This is my first Warhammer Story though, probably a one-shot too...maybe, so I do apologize if I screw up on lore or anything like that. Advice and constructive criticism is always welcome. Enjoy.
- Mojo
-The Caged Wolf: A Warhammer 40k Short Story-
"Listen but closely Brothers, for my life's breath is all but spent. There shall come a time far from now when our Chapter itself is dying, even as I am now dying, and our foes shall gather to destroy us. Then my children, I shall listen for your call in whatever realm of death holds me, and come I shall, no matter what the laws of life and death forbid. At the end I will be there. For the final battle. For the Wolftime."
- The last recorded words of the Primarch Leman Russ to his Sons and Chapter/
What is your life?
My honour is my life.
What is your fate?
My duty is my fate.
What is your fear?
My fear is to fail.
What is your reward?
My salvation is my reward.
What is your craft?
My craft is death.
What is your pledge?
My pledge is eternal service
- Space Marine Oath of Moment
(Imperial Death World of Fenris, Segmentum Obscuris, 509.992.M41)
The time of deep nothingness is ending, how long I have remained adrift, I do not know...
I know nothing during such times in which I slumber alone in the darkness, no light, no sound, no dreams of which stir me. None, save for those I weave myself. Memories of days long since past in service to the Allfather of Mankind, of enemies cruel and strange long since slain, of battles that could shake worlds long since played out to bloody conclusion...
Memories of a Sky Warrior vanquished, his thread now enduring by the barest sliver, denied to and even now sits before the grasping fangs of Morkai, taunting the Guardian of the Underverse with his very existence.
"...stooth...Ormstooth?"
As the nothingness fades, sensation and sense returns as it always has. And, similarly as before, I am left cold, and in pain.
Not the biting cold of Fenris' open skies, but a creeping chill in my bones, oh but compared to that the pain is negligible...for now. The cold in time will fade and I will miss it dearly, miss the memories of younger days that it evokes when I could've warmed myself with a hearty song and a tankard or twelve of Mjod to start me off easy. The pain...the pain is with me always, echos of my final battle as a free Sky Warrior of the Vlka Fenryka doing battle against the war-lusting Ork Greenskins upon a world wreathed in fire.
Those days when I would touch the sky on wings of fire only to fall upon my foes alongside my Packmates with fury unmatched, bolter and axe in hand...back when I was Taranis Ormstooth, Wolf Lord among a dozen other titles, master of my own Great Company in days passed...days long lost to me, lingering only to taunt me further...
"WAAAAAAAAGH!"
The scent and taste of blood, my blood, clogging my senses...clogging everything except for that all encompassing bestial call that seemed to echo not just in my ears but my very being itself. The call that was at the same time both a battle cry and a force of destruction all in one.
Worlds had burned before that sound, buried beneath the cruel green tide, buried like I was now...
Ork choppas fell across ceramite plate like hail, the foul wild eyed Xenos hordes dragging me to the red soaked dirt beneath sheer numbers, my brothers unable to do more than cry out as I disappeared in a mess of screeching mouths and tangled limbs, unable to even make out the glow of the alien sun hanging above me.
How annoying, at the height of my glory too, their once towering Warboss in pieces, his blood still steaming on the blades of both humming power axe and thrumming thunder claw, ancient weapons steeped in legacy and honors. Both equally worthless as the rabid boyz chopped and chopped away, digging their grubby claws greedily through Aquila-pattern armor plate, fibre bundles, and the scarred gene-forged flesh beneath.
I fought, by the Allfather and the ancient line of my forebears I fought...but to no avail. For every Greenskinned skull I pieced and rends, for every limb I crushed into powder, there seemed to be a dozen, a hundred, bodies upon bodies to replace them, unrelenting, unceasing...
That, in the end, was the trouble with Orks...you could slay their leader before the eyes of thousands, place their forces in the heat of a losing battle with no hope of escape, subject them to woes that would break any other army...and yet when it came to the Orks, they just would not stop!..
With those bitter confirmations of pain and cold I know that I at least live, that I have denied the crafty Morkai yet again. I live to fight again, to serve another glorious day in the Allfather's name. For I know my tomb awakens around me, that my Cage is active once more. The Dreadnought...
It bears a name, Lupus Ultori, the Avenging Wolf. A title to shake the hearts of my enemies and echo in the sagas told around the hearths of the Chapter. But to me...to me it will only ever be a prison, a prison for a body that had crossed axe blade and tooth with foul Daemons, viscous Greenskins, and other pernicious Xenos filth, now trapped in a suspension of wires and amniotic fluid, and I will address it as such.
My Cage blinks at me then as if sensing my exasperation, a cursor springing to life in my minds eyes. It is all I can see, my prison's eyes inactive as of yet, my own...my own have not witnessed anything in centuries.
"...eadings are nominal if unsteady...th's being stubborn..." Sound, muffled through the walls of the ancient engine of war, but present.
"-/COGITATORS ALPHA, BETA, GAMMA ACTIVE. LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS AWAKEN/-" Words stream across my conscious thoughts and cut short my train of thought, screaming all around me. Lupus Ultori has a mind of his own, separate from mine yet not all at once, bestial in a way that had all the fury of an oncoming Fenrisian Thunderwolf, yet none of the drive, the heart, the passion to make it bearable, to earn my respect. It was machine, as foreign as a Magos, one I couldn't simply send scurrying with a grunt. "-/INITIATE TESTING SEQUENCE. TESTING SEQUENCE INITIATED/"
The logos awakens alongside the ancient logic engines that house his mighty spirit, and by the blood of Russ it IS LOUD!
'...Ah shut up...I can read, you blasted...!' The meager bark of defiance is enough to put send a fanged smile across my lips, or so I'd like to believe.
Even after all these years, I still wasn't quite certain how much of me was sealed within the Cage's sarcophagus when the Wolf Priests worked their curious arts of the flesh. An arm, much of my head, perhaps a leg though the other I couldn't be sure, my Brothers had never told me, and I had never asked.
Now it was far too late, the years having seen all who would've known most likely long passed, their threads cut, or similarly entombed and out of reach.
"-/ENGAGING ENGINE. FUEL PUMPS ACTIVE. IGNITION SEQUENCE STARTING. THREE. TWO.../-"
My world trembles, a building sense of warmth breaking through the cold to reach my desiccated corpse as my Cage's joints shift, fiber bundles tensing as it stands tall in its cradle deep beneath the icy holds where my brothers feasted and reveled. A great beast awakening from its decades long slumber, eager for the next hunt, the next kill. That much we could agree upon, my prison and I...
"-/ENGINE TEST SUCCESSFUL. PRAISE THE OMNISSIAH! PRAISE HE WHO BRINGS FORTH THE LIGHT.../"
'...Yes, yes, praise the lubed cog and whatnot...' I tuned out the cries of Lupus Ultori's machine spirit, its calls of status and readiness, its prayers to the Machine God.
Prayer I could understand, but like any true son of Fenris I preferred to practice my faith in action, in pitched battle with the foes of my spiritual liege, not screamed in my mind like some spitting Bloodclaw caught in the battle lust of the murder-make, howling his lungs to the sky.
As my cage attempts to connect to weapon mounts and auxiliary systems, the equivalent of stretching its mighty limbs, lights representing its system array burst into a detailed array of colored text, runes and streams of information that filled my sensorium, appraising me of the ancient Dreadnought's condition.
Ammo counts all irritatingly at zero, shell integrity of the chassis, temperature below freezing as always in the depths of the Fang, fuel levels, elevation, nutrient levels, amniotic status, and more...so much more. So much that I'd long since given up on caring for any but those that would aid in the prosecution of my task, my duty for which I'd denied death itself to continue.
With the barest flicker of trepidation I turn my attention to the top left, towards the date and time, ceased at the moment my last sleep began. How long has it been this time, how long...?
I can sense an intruding presence near me, attempting to access my Cage's systems electronically, running diagnostics, activating and reactivating systems. That sadly meant I was not being prepared for war just yet, merely being roused so that when the time to march did come, I would answer the call without protest...much protest, anyway. Heckling and making the lives of those trained in the sorcery of steel was one of the few amusements left to me, after all.
With a jab of pain, far worse than before I can hear once more, or at the very least I hear through my Cage's ears. Sound returns in a cacophony spliced apart swiftly by the regulators in the Dreadnought's systems, enough to allow me to discern the distant rise and fall of hammers upon anvils, of rattling chains, of massive gears turning...and then, blessed sight.
I see through Lupus Ultori's eyes once more, I see the world upon which I was born, upon which I first learned to walk, to hunt, and to kill. Fenris, the cruel beautiful world that had first forged me, before I came to the Fang and the Chapter and learned the true meaning of that word.
An Iron Priest stands before me now, a pair of servo-arms clunking about over his inscribed shoulder plates as they darted too and fro across my prow. The armor and the totems he carried are familiar to me, the face bearing it less so, a younger man than he who had greeted me upon my last awakening. Curious, an ill omen upon the fate of his predecessor, then. His beard was shorter, blonde, his hair a tangled mess of braids worked through with iron-wrought wheels and loops and lacking any traces of grey. Fangs short, a lightly tattooed face possessive of the youthful energy indicative of those new to the Rout, fresh from the Claws ranks and newly returned from faraway Mars and their enigmatic brood.
A pup in all but role, lovely, just lovely...
From what little I could gather and assume, I was likely to be his first awakening, perhaps even his first experience with the Ancients of out Chapter. Those legendary heroes of old whose names and deeds he'd have committed to memory, aspired to emulate with his every breath since the Wolf Priests first plucked him from whatever meager life he had led before and brought to the Fang to face the trials...to face the beast within.
Unlucky him, I was in no mood to be idolized or revered this day, save such preening for the sons of Guilliman and Sanguinius.
"Taranis Ormstooth? You...You hear me, ancient one?" His voice was hoarse, likely from chanting the sacred rites of activation and maintenance required to awaken my Prison, but even through the distance of my Cage's walls I could still detect the joy in his voice amidst the deference, the growl of anticipation at having his call answered. I knew many of my older fellows refused such summons on occasion, for one reason or another. An eager one, then. "The name I earned is Anveas Stormdust. Praise the Omnissiah, praise the Allfather. I almost thought you might have...!?"
-"HOW LONG?"- My voice, no...my Cage's voice, rumbles like the bellow of a great Fenrisian Mammoth or the titanic shifting of a mountain under the weight of the long Winter's frost. An all encompassing thing that sent fur clad thralls and thick muscled menials scrambling about the great forge in a panic, one that surely threatened to overwhelm the young Astartes where he stood with its weight, but like any true son of the Vlka he endured, though I was pleased to see a bit of wary hesitation in his eyes, it showed some promise. Juvik was a rough language, a forceful tongue of warriors, but when given shape by a giant in both years and stature... -"HOW LONG HAVE I SLEPT?"-
My internal chronometer had not yet been updated, a poor sign.
I had to know, needed to know.
It was an old ritual, a habit born of centuries, one this welp had certainly not been apprised of if the sweat now gracing his brow was any indication. I could imagine the scent of his worry, his trepidation, but like so many others this was just that, imagination. All I had were air pressure readings, chemical analysis...hardly the same. A Guardsman's Amasec and a Sky Warrior's Mjod might both make for drink, but comparing one as opposed to the other...pointless.
"H-How long, Brother?" I was not about to ask again a third time, and at least the young marine was capable of understanding that much, gesturing one of the trembling thralls forward, a cogitator in his outstretched hands. "Yes, Chapter records kept by my predecessor who last roused you, Iron Forgemaster Galast Ironhanded, state...!?" He was cut off, the chamber in which we stood trembling as I stretched my Prison's limbs in truth, fiber bundles tearing and tugging at the chains that bound us still. A clearer message was not needed, the welp understood perfectly. "Sixty-Seven years, Lord." He keyed in a few hasty commands, my sensorium flickering for but a moment as the Dreadnought's systems drew forth from the holy data, correcting themselves.
Sixty-Seven years...Rarely had I been kept waiting so long, the fires of war unceasing just as were the enemies of Mankind. Questions swirling about in my head as to the reason, I wanted to ask why, why I had been denied!
Then I remembered it hardly mattered, what was sixty-seven years in the face of centuries of imprisonment? What was time in the face of my duty, my purpose, my last and greatest of joys?
Old and bitter beyond even the surliest greybeards I may be, but I was still Vlka Fenryka! Still a proud warrior of the Rout!
-"YOU HAVE CALLED FOR ME, ANVEAS STORMDUST. WOKEN ME FROM THE LONG REST."- If the lad had been nervous before, using his name seemed to bring back some measure of his nerve, a trick of command I'd learned over the course of my centuries of service. He believed this an honor, I merely didn't wish to bear the thrumming of his hearts beating themselves out of his chest like the hammer of his station any longer than I had to. -"WHY? WHAT PURPOSE WOULD THE CHAPTER ASK OF ME?"- Would I perhaps be sharing sagas with the Claws, giving advice to one of my predecessors, or would I be...
"What purpose?" Anveas stood up a little bit straighter, facing even so tiny a perceived challenge head on with fangs bared and fists clenched, golden eyes flashing with a fire that hadn't been there even in the beginning, more than simple excitement, such a simple emotion could hardly describe it. I knew that look, had seen it played across hundreds of faces over the centuries, a look shared by all who bled the blood of the Wolf King from the youngest Blood Claw to the eldest Long Fang, a look I would have no doubt shared if I still had the face to show it. The look of a beast who's picked up a scent. "Why, the only purpose that ever matters, my lord. The Hunt of course, the Vlka go forth to battle once more!"
'Ah, perhaps I could find it in myself to like the Pup after all.' I wondered, allowing myself to drift off once more as a cocktail of drugs and suppressents was pumped about my tattered system, pulling me back into the darkness of my imprisonment, my Cage closing in around me...
For now I would rest again, but when I woke...when I woke, I would be at war again...when I woke, I would be home once more...
-END