SWORN TO REMNANT

-CHAPTER 1 - The Time of Ending-

"Thirteen times shall the Traitor King go forth.
In the End Times the iron fortress shall be cast down.
Its walls breached and its Gate forced open.
Those that dwell beyond shall spill through it.
The air shall burn and the ground shall melt,
The Daemon shall lie down with the machine,
Brother shall slay brother with fire and sword.
And the sky-wound shall pour its malice forth.
The Eye shall stare unblinking at its prize,
and the Traitor King shall cross the bridge of stars.
He shall return to finish the Warmonger's red work,
Upon holy soil shall the fate of man be decided."

- Words of the Prophet of Corrinto, Taggarath. Later accused of the high crime of Heresy, summarily executed by Imperium Authorities...

(Imperial Fortress World of Cadia, Segmentum Obscuris, 999.M41)

The world of Cadia burns...

That most glorious of worlds with its populace and resources devoted to the holy art of war, that most steadfast of bastions standing vigil against the horrors of the Eye of Terror and the fell legions of Traitor and Daemon alike that called it sanctuary, was dying...

Cadia, where Vivian Stahl, lone remaining heir and Knight Apparent to the storied House of Stahl, Questor Imperialis to the Imperium of Man in service to the God Emperor, was going to die along with her family's lineage in her first true war.

Verdant Dawn, her mount, that glorious thirty foot tall Battle Engine bedecked in adamantium armor and livery the same color as the forests of ancient Terra. The laurels of its allegiance trimmed in silver inviolate across the Knight Warden's shoulder plating.

A creation of beauty that had borne generations of her ancestors into the fires of battle across a hundred worlds and a hundred wars since the days of the first Heresy itself, was going to die as well.

The blessed machinery of its construction ground to dust under the weight of Traitor forces, the heat of its plasma driven heart gone cold and silent. Glories it had won over centuries of service lost but for the brief snippets of mention likely present in some repository tended by servitor turned thralls and meaningless serfs whom existed only to steward the deeds of better men and women.

Remembered as mere footnotes in the eyes of a galaxy that would go on burning without either one of them. Consumed in the first battles of a war that, if prophecy was to be believed, would rival even the great Heresy itself in the scope of destruction, a war that she would miss.

'...How utterly galling...'

The Knight Scion's delicate fingers curled about the arms of her throne mechanicum, the palm of her right hand tingling white hot in a manner more pleasurable then painful.

A response of her connection with Verdant Dawn's whirring Avenger Gatling Cannon which even now felled Heretic and Mutant alike under a withering rain of mass reactive rounds in coruscating arcs of fire. Its motion and trajectory subject to her will, the weapon bound and unleashed at its pilot's behest. The motion akin to flexing a limb, dozens ended at the twitch of a psycho-somatic finger.

And how could she not feel as such? The feeling a sympathetic response born from the silvery wires threaded to neural ports surgically embedded at the base of her skull.

Gateways to her nervous system that allowed Vivian's consciousness to meld in mind, body, and soul with that of her mount, proof of her lineage, of her right to command such a force of destruction upon the fields of battle.

Towering above the broken withered lines of trench works and barbed wire fortifications, staring out at the distant sight of one of those towering Xenos pylons the Cadians valued so highly...

Vivian saw all, not with her own pitiful mortal eyes, but with the auspex sensor driven eyes of a demigod. A force of war incarnate gazing down upon its pitiful enemies with a detached sense of superiority well deserved in her mind, and she slew them with the same brief satisfaction with one might crush a particularly vexing insect.

While it could be said that her experience was a pale shadow in comparison with that of the Princeps, those blessed individuals judged worthy by the red robed priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to guide the true Titans of the battlefield, the God Machines in truth, those mighty beings that could shake worlds with their passing and devastate cities as an afterthought with their force of arms, she still of course had her bias.

Unlike the those mighty engines that raged thousands of kilometers away, god machines which required a full team of both Moderatii and Magos to operate alongside the Princep's will, this feeling was hers alone to experience.

Hers to revel in...

The bond she bore with the ancient machine spirit of her mount, the power she could feel coursing the Imperial Knight's servo driven limbs. That raging pulse of its reactor heart beating in time with her own, all of it hers.

Vivian alone could feel the steady stride of her Verdant Dawn's legs as clearly as she could feel her own two limbs. Each stanchion a potent weapon in its own right with the mass and tread to crush a chimera troop transport underfoot. Already the signs of her march could be seen across the battle lines, flattened and burnt out hulls, the crys of fleeing heretical chaff echoing between every quaking step the Knight Warden took.

Her other senses blazed too, in concert with the mighty weapon of war she commanded, the weapon she became.

A tickling sensation ran up her extremities underneath her pilot's suit, pinpricks of returning enemy fire, of auto gun rounds and heavy bolter fire alike, rebuffed by the flickering panorama of energy that comprised the Knight's Ion Shield. Played out in sacred sympathetic communion, her ears were a demigod's ears, picking up the screams as foes by the dozens fell like wheat before the scythe.

Together they were Verdant Dawn, the Emperor and the Omnissiah's wrath incarnate, a lord of the battlefield.

Together, they were triumphant, destroying all in their path.

Together, she was...

-"...ranging too far ahead..."-

The rasping mechanical whisper of an intruder echoed through the sanctity of the manifold. The desperate pleas of Sacristan Trager, last of those sworn to the noble Freeblade House of Stahl, caretaker to Vivian herself and moreover to the blessed duty of maintaining her mount.

His voice made harsh by time and the vox emitter long ago implanted in place of his throat, and raggedly distorted by the smoke and data corruption of the battle playing out beneath her notice.

-"...My Lady, any further and you risk exposing yourself. I recommend falling back, rejoining Lords Canus and Atra in the Lance..."-

"Your suggestion is noted and appreciated, Darius."

Vivian voxxed the reply in a clipped cool cadence that clearly unlined her irritation. Her words a jagged fiery spear through the communications, broadcasting just how 'appreciative' she was at being interrupted in the midst of battle.

"Your focus however should remain fixed on your task, assisting the ground forces. Not in interfering in the matters of your betters, do I make myself understood?"

Verdant Dawn sounded its war horn in unsubtle agreement, her true fist clenching and the massive Reaper Chainsword her mount carried in its offhand limb revving at the same moment with a roar that carried for kilometers around, shattering the eardrums of those closest.

-"Of course, Lady Vivian. My apologies."-

The young Scion gritted her teeth at the familiarity laden within the title, the ease that it passed between them.

Darius may have aided in raising her after their homeworld burned in the wakes of the Kraken, her Father's shameful disgrace, and their subsequent exile to the Imperium's many battlefields, but he was not her caretaker, not now.

And what's more she despised the reason for the stolid man's clear lapse in judgement.

He expected them to die, suspected the battle already lost, and grieved that she herself might be counted among the fallen. The gall of a servant, however loyal...

-"Good fortune to you. May the Omnissiah guide your sword, and see your enemies fall before your mighty tread. So let it be.."-

"Do your duty, Sacristan. Verdant Dawn hungers, and war calls me to feast."

She ended the connection with a stray thought impulse before her wizened servant could utter reply, before he could sense the worry tainting her anima through manifold.

Her mount could sense it however, to her momentary shame. It still hungered for more kills, more glory...The howls of its bestial spirit echoing within her mind, turning her focus to the task at hand.

She graciously allowed the great demi-Titan to execute its desires upon the ranks of mutants below, stomping them to paste. Venting her displeasure in the form of another salve from the hissing hull mounted Melta-gun affixed to the Knight Warden's chest, waves of energy turning corrupted flesh to crimson steam.

-"Ahhh...Finished rebuking the serf, are we?"-

Vivian scowled, the joys of fighting once again soured by another intruder sounding in her mind, this one far less welcome than Trager had been.

Strong, youthful, and hearty where the Sacristan's had been rasping and mechanical, the voice of Sir Atra of the Storied House of Krast was one used to speaking down to his inferiors, taunting his equals...

-"Or was he rebuking you? I must say it was rather difficult to tell for certain."-

Verdant Dawn roared her unspoken anger at the insult to the cloudy strewn heavens above, where the flashes of warp fire and lighting reigned supreme over any natural phenomena. Ponderously coming about with its own lumbering grace towards the direction of Mordred's Humility, Atra's own mount and no more a mislabeled creature than Vivian had ever seen.

The Knight Gallant's stocky form, bedecked in the crimson livery of House Krast that demonstrated its close loyalty to the Scions of sacred Mars, and a few more nonstandard trophies of gold and more ornate providence than Vivian felt strictly appropriate.

True symbols of foes conquered and glories earned she could appreciate. Verdant Dawn bearing more than a few of its own, garnered over centuries of campaigning and the host of battlefields it had walked in boisterous service.

Atra's gilded war machine on the offhand stank of something far less noble, and far more gaudy in aspect.

-"Well, regardless. I would think the noble firebrand of House Stahl above the bleating demands of mere servants."-

She could almost see the pale aquiline features of her fellow pilot, twisted in gleeful disdain, dark eyes shining with wicked mirth from beneath a shock of dark plaited hair.

-"Though I suppose when one must beg and scrape for scraps of glory on her knees, one takes advice as freely as everything else."-

"My Sacristan does not speak for me, Peacock!" Vivian reveled in the stunned anger she could feel in the man through the formation's connection at her defiance, her mount proudly answering the Humility's bleating war cry with one of its own. "And neither do you, whatever pomp or grandeur might possess you to think otherwise!"

+"No, he doesn't, but I do. Now silence this shameful inane posturing, both of you."+

Vivian, and very likely Atra in the embrace of his own Throne Mechanicum, winced visibly at the piercing command of Lord Canus, master of our current formation, bestride in his own towering Mount, Stalwart in Grace.

The Knight Paladin, larger in scale than either the Dawn or Humility, bearing similar livery to his Family member if distinctly lacking the same graceless fanfare of his lesser, marched into view. The thunder of its cannon a rebounding cadence piercing through the song of battle. Great blooms of dust thrown into the air with every salvo, masking the death cry of dozens in its contemptuous wake.

+"Bickering like the children you are, rather than the warriors you should be. Focus!"+

Vivian pulsed her acquiescence at the rebuke, Atra a moment later after some marked hesitation that nevertheless screamed through the connection we all shared.

+"Stahl, the Sacristan speaks out of turn, but also speaks truth. Rejoin the Formation post haste. Today is not a day for glory, but for bleeding the Arch-Traitor's forces for all we can take."+

"Y-Yes, my Lord." It took all her discipline not to growl her true feelings over the connection, closing her eyes and tearing Verdant Dawn from its course with almost painful effort. "But...But should we not advance further? Before more of the enemy pierce through our lines and reach the Kasr?"

+"Kasr Rantik is already falling, young one. We stand now only as a show of defiance. Best we stand together, I think. All of us."+

He aimed that remark towards Atra true, though Vivian was not spared its fury or His.

Canus was angry as well, furious even, but he knew his duty, both to the Imperium of Man and the Priests of the Red Planet. Both he and his Mount ached to bleed the foul forces of Chaos for all they were worth, to carve their mark into the foe before the end.

An impulse she could understand all too well as a fresh line of tanks bearing traitor colors rolled forth across the barren fields on bloodied treads churning choked earth.

+"For the Omnissiah, for the Emperor! May we make our mark deeply, and the let the Traitors hear our anger. Ave Imperator!"+

Hardly the inspired rallying cry Vivian might've preferred, but far from the worst, given the outlook of the day.

-"Ave Imperator!"-

Both young Knights answered in concert, their enmity forgotten for the moment in the glorious rush for battle, such a departure from the ceremony and boredom that conquered every other aspect of their lives.

The chance to go to war. Oh so wonderful war...

'Still, to die here unmarked...' Vivian viewed the decrepit war torn land, even detecting the heat blooms of burning ramparts that marked the Kasr's demise in the distance, '...how utterly galling.'

Life in the Guard was a simple thing in theory, so long as one followed the most important and simplest of decrees that is...

Long as a Trooper at least did that much, it was likely no Commissar or superior officer, however demanding, would find offense.

Unless of course you were really trying, of course...but then you were probably just dead, and no one cared regardless...

First rule of the Imperial Guard, the constant regulation that is understood by soldiers across a thousand thousand worlds, from the most backwards Feral World savage to the most uplifted noble scion plucked from his decadent Hive Spire...

A simple directive that had guided the fighting men and women of the Astra Militarum, even through the harshest and most horrifying of battlefields...

A law that would continue to do so as long as there was at least one hapless bastard still standing, lasgun clutched in hand and a prayer lauding the Emperor of Mankind fresh on their lips...

"Go forward!"

Trooper Lux Brindle of the 8th Cadian Shock Troopers responded to the barking commands of his Commissar instinctively, with the eager determination any proper Cadian would show.

He'd been expecting the order in truth, the battle worse than lost if the bedraggled defenders merely stood by to await the charging horde.

The stemming of the Heretics Armor reinforcement had presented a rare opportunity to the besieged, the rogue Knight Engine's advance allowing the rest of the company to do the same in their stomping wake.

If those Guard forces remaining wished to hurt the enemy, truly hurt them, this was their moment...

Already clambering and kicking his way up the muddy sides of the trench walls alongside dozens of similar flak armored bodies, careful to keep the worst of the gunk from fouling his own weapon and leaping to his feet.

Striding amidst storms of las and bolter fire criss-crossing their way through the air mere meters above his and the others' heads if passage made all the clearer against the gathering storm clouds above, a path wreathed in slaughter.

All souls moving as one at speed through the crater and corpse laden wasteland towards the next winding network of charred barricades and smoking defenses so graciously cleared of Traitors by the God Machines warring above.

At least cleared for the most part that is...

Some few misshapen dregs and wretches in scavenged armor pulled themselves burnt and bleeding from smoking crenellated earthworks. Desperately struggling to rally amidst the carnage wrought on them from above, but of course that is where Troopers like Lux came into play, where they excelled even.

To go forward in all things, always.

If the Trooper got lost, you go forward... If the Trooper loses your way, you go forward... If the Trooper falls away from your squad, you go towards the enemy...

That was the important distinction, cause that'd be where you could do the most good. Where you'll find your mates again more likely than not if everyone followed the rules too.

It didn't matter that he was a youth barely above a prissy whiteshield, that this would be his first war and more than likely his last.

Trooper Lux Brindle was a Cadian, and all that meant between a childhood in the underbelly of the sprawling Kasrs surviving the denizens lurking in the shadows of those great Hives, harsh adolescence in the youth armies training constantly against his fellows and cruel instructors, and the myriad of Throne damned tests both physical and mental to prove himself worthy of even being considered for the vaunted ranks of the Kasrkin.

Suffice it to say that brutal war and the expectation of a rather violent end were pretty much bred into the genes and marrow by this point.

Still, that didn't mean he was going to sell his life to the spiteful frakkers easily, far frakking from it!

"Take this opportunity men of Cadia, heroes of the Imperium all! This chance to bleed the forces of the Arch-Enemy for every step they dare take on the sacred soil of our world!" Junior Commissar Catelin cried out from her position at the head of the charge atop the trench walls.

Clutching both revving chainsword and bolter in hand she stood uncaring of the enemy fire screaming around her, dark hair blowing about a youthful unblemished face all sharp angles and smooth marble outlined by las-fire, resolved confidence shining in violet eyes most of her men shared.

Now that was proper Cadian stock right there, sculpted by the finest bloodlines the Fortress World had to offer. Forged by the demanding rigors of the Schola Progenium to stand above normal men and women, to lead them from the front. To be an example to them all in this life and the next, Emperor willing...

"Remember, even during our darkest hour, The Master of Mankind watches over us all, guiding our hands! His Will is ever strong, we shall not fail in his sight!"

"THE EMPEROR PROTECTS...!" The whole whole trenchline roared back the answering hymn on ragged tgroats, the Commissar raising her sword high towards the disparate ranks of the enemy across the killing fields.

Her face twisted in a rictus mask of righteous holy fury and zeal that would've done the Holy Saints adorning the walls and windows of the chapels proud.

'...Certainly a damned sight better to look at then her superior, especially after that first attack...'

A rakish grin tugged at Lux's scarred lip, made all the wider as the battle fervor and uplifting call to arms took them all. Raising flagging spirits and fanning the fires of zealous vindication, and considering the situation the bedraggled remnants of the Shock Trooper's company were up against that alone in itself was a miracle.

Miraculously, the Commissar's clipped voice somehow managing to carry itself above a heady mix of chanting calls issuing forth from the Traitor lines that made Lux's ears ache. Audible even above the whizzing crack of ionized air drowned continuous stream of heavy weapons fire and artillery, the grinding tread of tanks, and even those booming steps and bellowing cries of the Titan God Machines warring above their heads.

"Remember, the Emperor watches us this day, his watchmen of the Gate! In His name, for His glory, WE FIGHT!"

"AVE IMPERATOR!"

The call rose up from every throat along the line including his own, spurring those few Traitor forces still standing and not in the process of fleeing back towards their kin, to start firing back.

Troopers beginning to fall in cursing screaming heaps, brought low or cut apart by las and autogun fire to tumble into the mud at their feet either going forth to meet the Emperor or currently well on their way.

But for every man cut down, a dozen more leapt into trenches or skirted over hastily erected barricades to carve their vengeance into those forces besieging their world personally.

Blood flowed, both on the ground of his dying world and in his veins, heart pounding with the intensity only the rush of battle could provide, tempered by faith and skill. This was where he belonged, this was what he'd been born and remade for.

Always moving forward...always.

..."Throne, well aren't you a looker!?"...

Lux snapped his rifle up to his cheek just before hitting the trench, taking that split second to focus in on a pair of beady eyed mutants with horns and far too many eyes. Breathing back his fetid disgust even as he felt the telltale prickling warmth of an enemy shot graze passed by his helmeted head, pulling the trigger and grinning as the creature that had fired the shot fell back minus most of its bulbous head.

"Well, least you were, hah!"

It's fellow barely having time to cry out what was no doubt some merciful plea to its dark gods before he'd hurtled over the lip of the trench and drove his bayonet into its neck with the force of his fall, dragging them both to the muddy ground in a tangle of limbs like some underhive dive brawl.

Of course, back then it had all been about getting through the day, finding the next meal, even if there had been some guilt in leaving a poor codger to bleed in the pipe works over some piss stinking ration blocks.

Here was an enemy Lux could feel good about hurting, a welcome change surely. The trooper grinning through his exertions, twisting the blade's edge, driving it deeper through thick layers of tainted flesh and fat.

"Got you! You ugly son of a...uwagh!?"

To the young trooper's stark surprise however, the frakker just wouldn't seem to falter. Even with plasteel stuck in its throat and life blood seeping away into the muddy dirt it fought him like a stubborn grox.

No, even grox knew when to frakkin' die!

Gurgling growls welled up from the sucking orifice that should've been its mouth, the abomination throwing its broad scale coated arms and thrashing fiercely with surprising inhuman vigor.

Surprising enough to force its way on top of its attacker in a fevered last stand, dirty clawed hands scratching across the surface of Lux's flak armor and helmet, carving deep furrows but blessedly holding under the onslaught.

Desperately, Lux fired with abandon at extreme close range once, twice, three times in rapid screaming succession. The odor of sour cooked meat filling his nostrils as he blew out the mutant's throat and lower jaw with searing flashes of heat that sent scalding pain across his arms and face, but finally putting an end to the struggling once and for all.

Unfortunately when the monstrous being expired, its muscles gave way and all resistance with it, impaling itself further on the steaming lasgun and crushing the gasping Trooper beneath its sheer bulk and dead weight.

Lux couldn't breath, fingers scrabbling over the soiled leathers and scattered bits of plate that made up the mutant's equipment, unable to find purchase or leverage.

Frak, he was gonna die on his back crushed by some mutant.

Never had he thought it'd end like this, not in all his years scraping and fighting for every scrap of honor and prestige an ex-Kasr rat could hope for.

Maybe falling in glorious battle fighting a traitor champion as hordes of maidens weep at his passing, sure. His teeth deep in the ugly Frakker's eye like any proper Cadian would hope for.

To go out doing any less, now that was just disappointing, and thank the Emperor it was not to be...

"Trooper Brindle, hardly the time to be carousing. Don't you agree?"

Lux breathed in deep as the weight was drawn from his chest, gasping for every piss scented gulp like it was the sweetest thing he'd ever tasted.

A moment later he took note of the pair of grim carapace armored Storm Troopers, Kasrkin in truth, at his side, already moving with drilled efficiency towards the next fight, their bulkier Hotshot Las-guns held at the ready. Armarment that could punch through tank armor given enough charge, and liquidate flesh with ease.

Before him heaved the petite form of Junior Commissar Catelin herself, chainsword in hand, its teeth choked liberally with mutant gore.

Insanely enough, that was the dirtiest part on her, the rest as pristine, as one could be in a battlefield like this one. A feat meanin she wasn't covered head to toe in dirt, grime, and blood like everyone else in sight.

With a snarling huff, she kicked at the fallen mutant carcass with her booted heel, frown never leaving her lips.

Heh heh, likely the most beautiful thing Lux had ever had the grace and fortune to witness in his short stint at life. And what's more she wasn't done, not by far.

"Zealotry is to be commended, but not at the cost of sense. So teaches the Scholam in it's wisdom." The Commissar concluded her sermon succinctly, stepping away as the Trooper before her stared in open mouthed awe. "Now stand and retrieve your weapon, Guardsmen. You're useless to me without it."

Lux merely nodded along dumbly, at least until the clearing of an agitated throat spurred him to his feet, hands already moving to wrench his Las-rifle's bayonet clear of the mutant's neck and stand at attention while his Lady Superior moved on to rally the other survivors who remained fit.

Far more than had been expected, far less than he would've liked...those not seeing to their more wounded comrades.

Unfortunately cleanliness and proper Cadians hadn't been the only casualty of the charge, he noticed with a swearing scowl.

Lux's helmet, already overlarge given the usual standards of Imperial Guard uniform sizing and mass production, had been reduced to a mangled ruin hanging by a few strands of ragged leather. A loss, but the only way to make up for it would've been to grab one off one of the plentiful corpses.

Not the worst thing he'd have done truth be told, far from it, but he wasn't feeling particularly ghoulish. Not today...

And the loss of protection was a small price to pay for clear hearing, especially in these close confines. He noted with a pragmatist's resignation.

'If somethings gonna pop me in the head, think I'd rather it be quick and get it over with...'

From there the fighting continued same as it had for the last few hours, meter by slogging meter, section by bloody section...never ceasing, rarely slowing...

The Commissar leading from the front the entire way as the bedraggled Imperial Forces secured their latest ground in her wake.

Trench fighting was in itself a bloody affair, at least that had what Lux had always been told by veterans and instructors. And they had been far from mistaken in that regard.

A brutal mess of bright flashes, screams both human and inhuman alike, firefights that felt as if they'd lasted hours but could only really have been matters of minutes if that, though to be fair it was at least better than the first charge in Lux's opinion.

The walls of the trenches made for passable renditions of the Kasr Underbellies where he had come of age, the smells and enclosing walls almost enough to make him feel at home. Wasn't that why the recruiting sweeps had picked him up, half feral and half starved in the midst of their frequent raids?

It was that comfort that allowed him to face the enemies of man grinning as he was, even if it did put off a few of the men alongside him.

They weren't smart enough to see he was just as afraid as the rest of them, just as desperate. Lux was just better at hiding it...weakness got ya gutted in the pits by the other rats, body left to rot in the dark.

So he kept smiling, lying to the whole of the galaxy even as it burned.

'Ave Imperator indeed, at least I...hmm?'

Something had splashed down a top his head, little more than a drip really that he'd hardly have noticed if he'd still donned his helmet, spreading a brief stint of warmth across his scalp.

Still, it drew his attention in the brief moments of rest as he ejected a spent power pack, letting it fall steaming into the vitae soaked muck, raising his head to the sky.

There, just showing through the roiling mess of crimson clouds, shined the Eye of Terror. Larger now than it had ever been before, pockmarked with what could only be the distant outline and flashes of distant void war.

Lux had expected it, had grown up knowing the same disgust and sense of trepidation felt by every proper Cadian at its baleful glow. But the Gate to Hell wasn't what drew his focus, no.

That was reserved for the vortex slowly forming amidst the clouds above shining far closer. Crimson lightning pulsing with the crash of not so distant thunder, and at its heart, looking back at him...and in his soul it truly felt as though it knew him...

"By the bloody Throne of Terra." He whispered the words, chest suddenly tight as all the moisture left his throat, unable to tear his gaze away. "What the frakking hell...?"

(Unmarked World of Remnant, Segmentum Unknown, Date Indeterminate - Beacon Academy)

"...is that?"

Ruby Rose ignored the question even as it passed from her lips, staring wide eyed out their dorm room window, the portal affording a grand view of the curious weather pattern swiftly forming above the Emerald Forest.

Roughly over the spot temple she and the others had fought their way towards during initiation at the start of the year, or close enough to it, having appeared after a deafening boom with such force that it had rattled the windows and sent her sister Yang barreling into her in an attempt to shield her from some attack.

After more than a minute of pounding over-pressure, startled screams, and rattling furniture that had seen Blake's bunk bed topple to the floor, everything had ceased.

Ruby extricating herself from Blake's scattered sheets, taking it upon herself as Leader of Team RWBY to try and come to terms with the situation. To understand, and now she couldn't look away.

A storm of clouds as dark as Grimm matter, moving with purpose in a way that seemed wholly too sinuous. A dozen gigantic serpentine monsters writhing about in a tangled web of elemental forces too massive for her to comprehend, and at its core an eye...or at least it looked like one. Burning crimson with a pupil of burnished gold that made her head ache the longer she stared.

It was looking at her, she knew that...she knew so much, sensuous whispers caressing her senses and twiddling clawed fingertips through the meat of her soul, promises made in pacts of blood, echos of things beyond the reckoning of mortals, and so much more...and...and...

The young Huntress shook her head out, the strange lapse all but forgotten in a sudden need to act, to do her duty.

She was scared, terrified of this strange phenomenon, and that meant that others no doubt would be as well. The Grimm would be drawn, she had to be ready.

Something was coming, and she had to be prepared to face it. And to do that, she needed her baby, she needed Crescent Rose...

-END

A/N: Here it is, my long winded attempt to start a crossover fic between RWBY & Warhammer. Was originally supposed to be longer with more scenes detailing other characters and whatnot (Namely the Sister of Battle & Sanctioned Psyker). Thing is I've had this on the backburner for a long time and I thought I might as well post what I had.

It's a bit ambitious, especially given what I thought might happen and all the other stuff I'm working on. Scattered Space Marines, maybe a Titan, Chaos Influences, general confusion.

If people want to see more, I can give it a shot. Who knows, either way I hope it was at least somewhat enjoyable. - Mojo