STAR OF IPPICRUS
4
THE CREATURES CAUGHT WITHIN THE CHAOS SPACE MARINES' ARMOUR HOOTED AND HOWLED. Their soulless warp-spawned eyes shone with malevolent glee. Horrible tongues reached out between chomping, needle-sharp teeth.
Draznicht and Jibbek hurled themselves upon the Dark Angel's Sergeant with a blind and murderous hunger.
Jibbek's power-axe crackled over Raphael's head as the veteran sergeant ducked beneath it. The traitor lieutenant then crashed bodily into the Dark Angel and sent him sprawling across the sand dune. The Ravager had unnatural speed - even for a superhuman. Jibbek raised the power-axe high overhead and brought it slamming down again. Raphael rolled out from beneath its deadly descent as the power weapon buried itself deep in the sand where his head had been.
It would have been the perfect time for Raphael to run his chainsword through the lieutenant's stomach but Draznicht was upon him next. And Draznicht was even faster!
Raphael raised his chainsword on the angle of assault. Three jarring blows from the Chaos Champion's power-maul almost ripped the weapon from Raphael's stunned grasp. The veteran sergeant rolled to his feet and lunged in desperate riposte.
Draznicht bobbed back one step and weaved the next, the chainsword passing harmlessly through the warm, desert air.
'You've slowed down, Raph,' Draznicht mocked him. 'If you had masters such as mine they might have bestowed you reflexes as swift and sure as mine.'
Raphael looked over his shoulder. Behind him Tars was desperately fending off Hyllus's lightning-claws. The young marine was not faring well against the deadly Ravager's savage attacks.
'I think I will do well enough,' Raphael growled. 'My Emperor sits upon the Holy Throne of Terra and gives me all the strength and speed I need.'
He lunged forward and his chainsword almost nicked the Chaos Champion's pouldron... Almost.
Draznicht giggled as he side-stepped Raphael's blade. The myriad demonic faces trapped in the Chaos Champion's armour laughed and cackled with him. He swung low and smashed Raphael's legs out from under him. The Sergeant sprawled to the sands in agony.
Behind them Jibbek had retrieved his axe from the sands and was stalking back to rejoin the fight.
'Your Emperor is nothing but bones and dust, Raphael!' Draznicht hissed. 'As you will soon be!'
Bare meters away, Tars was being forced backward and doing everything he could to defend against Hyllus's frightful assault. The Ravager was the perfect embodiment of ferocity. For every lumbering strike of Tars's swinging plasma gun the Ravager's lightning-claws would cut the air four or five times, shrieking as they went.
Twice the razor-sharp adamantine blades slipped through the young marine's power armour as though its ceramite plates were little more than slabs of butter beneath a scolding hot knife. So far the claws had not breached Tars's carapace and flesh beneath.
Tars toppled onto his back. He barely kept a telling blow from cutting through his gorget. The ancient plasma gun was about the only thing sturdy enough to withstand the claws. It held them presently, inches from his helm, screeching across the ancient weapon's carbon-adamant alloy casing. There were already three purity seals fluttering from the side of the cumbersome gun. If the young marine managed to survive this battle it was bound to require a fourth!
Tars kicked out and sent the Ravager stumbling backward. It was enough for the young marine to regain his footing, but little else. Hyllus screeched inhumanly, like a swooping raptor, and charged the young Dark Angel.
As the lightning-claws cut the air once again Tars had no more chances left. He was flung from side to side. A boy being toyed by a much older, highly trained opponent. As the Ravager forced him onto his back again and sent his plasma gun flying from his grasp, the young marine raised his arms instinctively to stop the killing blow. Both he and Hyllus knew nothing could stop it.
Aramon came lumbering up the dune like a charging grox bull. Roaring in desperation to protect his battle-brother the big marine charged into the enemy, sending the Ravager hurtling through the air to crash atop his head.
Aramon lifted the huge bulk of his plasma cannon high. The creature within Hyllus's shoulder pouldron squealed in terror - for it was the only demonic symbiont to see the deathblow coming.
Hyllus did not get to see his doom. Aramon snarled as he brought the cannon crashing down. It crushed Hyllus's helm like a boiled egg. The Ravager's body spasmed violently and then went still. The creatures caught in Hyllus's power armour moaned and squealed, the light in their hellish eyes fading as their tainted souls slipped back into the Warp. In seconds the faces were nothing but sculpted effigies in the twisted remains of ancient ceramite.
Aramon and Tars turned to see Sergeant Raphael outnumbered. The Dark Angels charged across the sands to lend their strength and even out the fight.
Below the melee, Librarian Turmiel stalked up the dune to join them. It was just the two Chaos warriors now, seemingly outnumbered, though he knew how well the Ravagers could fight in close quarters. He was drawing closer to the swirl of limbs and blades when the heavy stubber gunner opened up again.
Turmiel looked up in a daze at the huge muzzle flashes atop the crashed Valkyrie. He had forgotten all about the stubber gunner.
Not wanting to kill his leader in the melee the gunner's sole focus of attack was the maimed Librarian.
Turmiel raised his gauntlet and caught two heavy calibre rounds in the palm of his hand. The rounds had flattened out into shiny silver discs. Each so very close to tearing off the Librarian's head. The shots had sent him back a step onto his bad leg and he crumpled helplessly to one knee.
Turmiel swayed, drunkenly. He glanced down, the flashing readouts of battle damage scrawling across the inside of his gorget went completely unheeded by the Dark Angel Librarian. It told him to rest, to recover from his wounds, to take cover nearby, anything but stay where he was. Blood pumped from the wounds in his leg. So much blood it almost made him fear for his life.
The Librarian grinned to himself. Just a momentary flashback to his old humanity. It had been decades since he had felt this close to joining his Emperor.
He looked back up toward the gunner. He pointed his force sword at the man and waggled it up and down as though to scold a child.
'You should not be in this fight,' he said to the gunner. Though he doubted the man could hear him. The heavy stubber blazed away with abandon.
Bullets buzzed and zipped past him, tracer rounds flashed by his bared face. The pupils of Turmiel's eyes blossomed wide, not even blinking against the deadly onslaught. The Librarian gaped into the hail of gunfire in reckless awe. For a moment he thought he was back on the deck of the Lord Dante when the Infernus-class Grand Crusier was about to make a Warp Jump to Hegremon IV or Pythos. It almost looked like this tunnel of howling hell he now stood within.
No, that could not be right. That was long ago. Too many brothers had died since then. He had seen them go, seen their geneseed placed into new brothers. Some of those brothers had died too.
Death? Turmiel raised his arm once again to hide his face from the incoming storm of heavy stubber fire. This time another round shrieked off the strut of his psychic hood.
The Librarian was jarred awake. He looked up at the stubber gunner and pointed a finger at the man.
'I told you, you should not be here!' the Librarian admonished.
An arc of witchfire leapt from his outstretched finger. The smiting energy followed the hail of stubber fire along its path, up inside the barrel of the weapon and then tore out through its breech into the gunner's eyes.
The heavy stubber was silenced. An almost pleasant quietude fell over the desert sands of the Bleeding Sea.
Then the man screamed.
His scream reached such a tremulous pitch that the membranes in his vocal cords snapped. The man's hisses filled the air as his face melted in witchfire and his fingers helplessly tried to scrape it away. Then his skull exploded.
Turmiel watched as the corpse slipped over the edge of the Valkyrie and tumbled to the sands.
'Good,' he muttered in dazed satisfaction. 'Now I can think.'
Then he frowned. He could hear the guttural grunts and growls of combat and wondered where it might be coming from. Somewhere behind him. That was odd.
He turned to see four marines battling one another. One marine, a Dark Angel, was already motionless upon the ground. The fight appeared to be evenly matched. But then Turmiel noticed how guileful and cunning the pair were with the darker, reddish armour as they plunged from side to side swinging their crackling power weapons. They were so familiar to the Librarian. How quick they were to strike and then step out from the attacks of the two lumbering Dark Angels.
Aramon and Tars, Turmiel realised. They were fighting a desperate battle against Draznicht and his traitor lieutenant, Jibbek! And Sergeant Raphael was lying dead upon the ground!
'The Emperor's Wrath will burn you to oblivion!' Turmiel howled.
The Librarian reached deep into the Warp to channel what little life and sense he could restore to his dying body. Something was whispering to him from that dark void, and it yearned for him to bring back more than the share he needed.
Turmiel fought against the temptations - the Perils! - of the Warp. If he lost his concentration now, even for a moment, anything might come roiling from that howling void and burst out through him into the material world. And it would likely devour everything in sight.
Turmiel had two fronts to fight upon. Chief Librarian Ezekiel had warned him of this day - Turmiel remembered well the venomous old snake's auguring, before he had set off upon his quest.
'It is likely you will be the last of them,' the old Librarian had muttered with a sly grin upon his face. 'In the end. The signs all point to your annhilation, of yourself and all those around you. The test will prove too great for your soul I fear. You will give out before it is through. Do you still wish to seek the relic?'
'More than life itself,' Turmiel had said, with all the arrogance and wind of youth. A quarter of a millennia had already passed since his aspirant trials. He had seen many fall attempting to reach the place he planned to be. The Inner Circle. Of it he had heard only the ghost of rumours, the knowledge of a knowledge that no one was no one was allowed to know about, yet he wanted it more than anything.
'It is likely,' the Chief Librarian crooned. 'That it will be more than just your life at risk, young Turmiel. What good is such blind courage if your body and soul are not strong enough to contain it?'
'I am strong enough!' Turmiel snarled his response into the cooling winds of the Bleeding Sea. Standing half way between memory and the present.
The young Librarian took another step across the dark sands, watching as his battle-brothers fought desperately against the Ravagers. His night vision picked them out like swirling whirlwinds. Above them the stars roared with silver fire.
He remembered Ezekiel laughing at him. Laughing even as he fled the Great Hall of the Librarium. Ezekiel had said it would be good if Turmiel could prove him wrong. For so few ever did.
Turmiel heard the old man's laughter even now as he raised his force sword and staggered forward. Off to join what was likely to be his final battle.