Disclaimer: All rights belong to their respective owners. Thanks go to Toasterman for helping me with this fic.
An infinite plane of jagged mountains, canyons, erupting volcanoes and vast expanses of rotting flesh and arteries clogged with coagulated blood jutting out of the cracks of the landscape covered in cooling lava. But, something is wrong. There are no screams of tortured souls, no stench of rotting human flesh or anything that would further confirm that this is a world of daemons.
The daemons shuffle awkwardly, looking around in confusion. They felt the call come from the warp and came for it. When they arrived, they were suddenly pulled into a pocket of reality that wasn't supposed to be there, but it was. And unlike realspace that some of them remember entering a couple of times, this pocket of reality was different. Somehow in it the warp felt stronger, more solid and in fact, the daemons could feel that should they stay, they wouldn't deteriorate, unlike in realspace, which was clearly separated from the warp.
Then, one of the daemons saw something in the distance. A mountain clearly different than the others, it was higher and thicker, as if it was a tower. Over the next few days they traveled in the direction of the tower. On the way they saw the remnants of battles all over the landscape, rotting viscera and gore adorned the ground and walls, shell and bullet casings littered the ground while the walls were covered bullet holes and scorch marks.
Finally, an undetermined amount of time later the gargoyle like daemons arrived to the base of the tower, which in fact turned out to be a massive pile of bleached daemonic and human bones, all leading to the top, an asteroid, floating some miles of the surface of the hellish landscape.
The servitors and techpriests of Adeptus Mechanicus worked in complete synchronization, methodically doing their assigned tasks, while the machines they serviced quietly hummed as power coursed through them. A burst of machine code broke the relative silence of the room, a moment later the hum of the machines increased, as did the brightness of the lights as more power started coursing through the machines in the room.
The room itself was large, cluttered with thousands upon thousands of machines, all interconnected with cables, all of which led to the center of the room. Unlike the others, the machine in the center was a bit larger than the rest. Two massive circular platforms in the shape of a cylinder, took up most of the machine, while the rest was what connected the cylinder to the rest of the machines in the room.
With another burst of machine code, the sound of the hum rose even higher and something started happening in the cylinder. At first it was just air rippling, as if someone dropped a stone into a pond, then the particles of dust and the like started being pulled into the device while a small wind picked up.
The daemons finally clambered atop the floating asteroid, no matter how much they tried to fly or use other abilities to climb to it, none of them worked. Each time they tried, the air became too heavy, too hard to breathe and their bodies twitched in agony, forcing them to let go and fall back down to the base of the tower. But at the top, at the asteroid, these effects were constantly present and intensified with each step the daemons took in the direction of a small tower in the distance.
In the end only few could withstand the pressure that crushed most of them like beer cans, the agony that destroyed their minds or the literal lack of anything to breathe the closer they came to the tower. The tower itself was covered in cracks, dents, holes and faded five-point stars covering broken daemonic faces. All around the tower the ground was soaked in blood and covered in broken bones, strangely none of which were human. And finally only one of the daemons reached the top; it was a dreadnaught sized daemon whose looks were similar to a Khorne Bloodthirster, if only smaller.
The top of the tower was devoid of everything except a broken five-point star etched into the floor with long coagulated blood. And in the centre of the star sat a human… skeleton, adorned in green armor and a helmet, the visor of which concealed everything except two faintly glowing yellow orbs which suddenly turned red and menacing.
The hum of the machines in the room was almost deafening, but nothing compared to what was happening in the cylinder. The air rippled and twisted, the dust particles orbiting in visible chaotic paths around the center point of it all… a small glowing speck of red light that slowly expanded and with it vaporizing air and dust.
A moment later the pinprick of light suddenly expanded and filled the whole cylinder, a pillar of blinding red light that then shrank into something resembling a doorway of light. Suddenly something flew out of the doorway, crushing machines, servitors and a single techpriest in its way until it crashed against a wall, creating a sizeable dent in it.
The armored skeleton blinked, or at least the two glowing yell orbs behind his helmet visor did. Because the daemon the revenant punched and was about to fly off the tower AND asteroid into the mountain of bones bellow, flew through a portal made of red light at the edge of the tower.
"Oh you have got to be kidding me!" the skeleton growled out as he walked to the door way.
"Someone is going to have boot shoved up their ass for this." with that said, the being known as Corporal Flynn 'Fly' Taggart of Fox Company, Fifteenth Light Drop Regiment, United States Marine Corps, walked through the doorway, intent in finding out who was playing around with Union Aerospace Corporation portal technology.
To those that still can't guess, this is a crossover between a fusion of Doom I & II novels, Doom3 and Warhammer 40,000.