Another chapter down. This one was kinda hard to write, so I appoligize if it sucks. It's mostly groundwork for the Big Ultimate Epic Showdown (for this arc) that's coming up next episode.
Glacin, sorcerer of Chaos, looked at the incredibly detailed table showing the northern front of the campaign, his region of command. The tabletop was made of simple wood, but several daemons bound within it allowed it to reflect the terrain for several hundred miles around with incredible detail.
To be honest, though, the thing was more trouble than it was worth. The daemons bound in the device were rebellious, to such an extent that controlling them left little time to actually use the... damned? What would I call it? Glacin thought. Technically, he was already damned, so would using the term as actually be complementary? So would I call it Blessed? Sacred?
As usual, Glacin was confused. He had risen in the Chaos 'hierarchy', such as it was, through force of ability, rather that devotion to the dark gods. He looked more closely at the table display. In the beginning, his orders had been simple. Throw the bodies of the devotees at the loyalist defenses until they broke, throw more bodies to keep them running as long as possible, then repeat.
In recently, however, the situation had become more complicated. The loyalist and their suits had taken the southern pass, and the loss of the flow of bodies was not starving his 'army'.
It was asphyxiating it.
What's more, his masters were insisting that he continue the attack. The side of Chaos would ultimately win, that was simply a matter of numbers. The governor had some nice toys, and his personal army was a much better force than many of the treasonous elites were willing to admit. Despite that, Chaos simply had quite literally more bodies on the planet than the governor had railgun rounds.
From outside his command tent, a sound, a sort of squishing, along with the sound of bones cracking, filled the air. Some 'lucky' fool receiving a mutagenic 'gift' from his patron, no doubt. The degree to which the sounds indicating the person was being changed was oddly extreme, but-
A blade flashed, and a section of the front of the tent fell away. On the other side stood a tall figure clad in black armor and hold a long, shiny sword, one that seemed to have a strange, indescribable oddness about it. It held some strange, pistol-like weapon in its other hand. Looking more closely at the figure, Glacin realized that it was clearly female, or at least wearing armor designed to give that impression.
The assassin began to move toward him. The last thing he thought before the shining blade took him was a hope that the assassin would kill the table too.
"Well" Xanthis said, looking at the latest updates from the front "this is new."
It was a truly interesting development. Apparently, the commander of the Chaos forces on the northern front was assassinated, which, combined with the lack of reinforcements they were suffering, was causing the foe to collapse on the northern front.
"Yes," Felix said slowly "it is." The functional commander of the Serneldran PDF was not physically present, and was communicating via an astropathic link, although the Spirit of Serneldra was close enough to its destination that that wasn't truly necessary.
"You sound like you think that this isn't a positive turn of events." Xanthis said, somewhat confused.
"It's the ACS. If we attack now to break the northern front, and we really have to, they'll pour south, and they'll overrun the position that the ACS is holding. At present, most of the pressure on them has come from the south."
"I've read the reports." Xanthis said, sighing. "As I see it, the only real choice remaining to us is to enact a full-scale push on the northern line while simultaneously withdrawing all surviving ACS and Mobile Cavalry troops."
"Agreed," Felix said. "The only alternative is to sacrifice all remaining troops on the southern front."
"And we might need them later in the campaign," Xanthis lied. His motivations for wishing to preserve the men were entirely different.
The man, who had once been a mechanic, had long forgotten his name. He had given himself to the Primordial Truth long ago, or at least from his point of view.
Now, he simply maintained the various armored combat vehicles needed for the advance of the servants of his cause. Despite the large armored clash earlier in the week which had destroyed many vehicles, even more remained intact. The mechanic, while he saddened by this on some level, wasn't sufficiently concerned for it to be noticeable to an outside observer, let alone impact his work.
At present, he was performing minor repairs on a 'Leman Russ' battle tank. He found the name distasteful and would have preferred to call it something else, but he lacked the necessary higher order thought functions to think of an alternative.
The mechanic's nose wrinkled. He didn't think it per se, but on some instinctual level, he recognized the smell.
Promethium.
As he continued to work, the scent grew stronger. Eventually, the Mechanic became somewhat concerned. The intensity of the smell could indicate a major fuel spillage. However, the main fuel bunkers were rather far away; it was much more likely that another mindless worker had spilled some fuel. He ignored the smell.
A few minutes passed. The winds had changed, and the scent had faded to a trace. The Mechanic barely remembered it. As a result, when a thin flow of transport, strong smelling liquid snaked past him, he was utterly surprised for a moment.
After that moment of surprise, the Mechanic stopped being able to feel such things, probably due to the fact that he had transformed into a pile of scorched bones scattered across the burning ferrocrete of the maintenance center.
The Callidus Assassin didn't even bother to turn to observe the effects of her handiwork as the tank park was engulfed in flames. She had ruptured the fuel tanks, and then set bombs to ignite the spillage. It had been easy, too easy really, although that was easily explained. Her training had hammered into her the notion that Chaos warbands, even very large ones, very rarely had anything resembling a chain of command. In the normal course of operations, the warlord who led them made up for this by sheer force of authority.
However, remover him, and the whole thing could fly apart.
So that was what she did.
The incineration of the vehicle pool hadn't been part of her initial mission plan; that had been a simple target of opportunity. Technically that didn't matter, as she was, for the first time in her 'career', operating without direct oversight and mission planning. She had been deployed on live-fire kill missions, but those were practically the Calidius Temple's equivalent of training maneuvers. This was her first 'deep cover' operation.
As she continued to advance, a group of cultists rounded a corner, drew a variety of weapons, and opened fire. The assassin ducked behind cover, drew her neural shredder, and fired.
She waited a few seconds for the heretics to finish dying, and then continued moving, more urgently than before.
"GENTLEMEN!" Clayton said, addressing the platoon's worth of soldiers assembled before him. "In a few short hours, we will receive orders to commence an advance. By the benevolence of the Emperor, the enemy forces are in disarray. If we hit now, we should break them."
He looked over the assembled soldiers. They were a mixture of Crown Legion and PDF troopers. Pretty much all of the Crown Legion men still had their standard issue equipment; the PDF soldiers were a different story. They were armed with a mixture of las, auto, and rail guns, and several of them had co-opted various pieces of pseudo-active armor, while some had managed to lose even their flak jackets.
As for himself, Clayton had received a field commission and promotion after the events of the retreat. While that motion had met mixed results overall across the front, he, at least, had retained some semblance of order on his section of the front.
"Now," Clayton continued "I know most of you have seen action in this conflict; this will be nothing like any of what most of you have been in. In those engagements, you were fighting in static positions from behind prepared defenses. In this battle, we will be fighting a battle of maneuvers in the open field."
The looks on the faces of the men were a mixed bag. This was going to go poorly.
Lloyd fired a suppressing burst from his minibolter, allowing a handful of ACS troopers to drop back from the covered positions that they had been occupying. They retreated a short distance, then grabbed onto handles welded onto the legs of his Knightmare for that express purpose.
He began to move back, moving much more slowly than his ground effect would allow. After all he thought ruefully it wouldn't do to shake off the parasites.
Despite the name, the relationship between ACS troopers and Mobile Cavalry Knightmares was actually very beneficial to both, at least in this situation. The crunchies got free moving cover and supporting cover, and the Mobile Cavalry was protected from cultists swarming into the 'dead zones' that their weapons couldn't cover. A Knightmare's dead zones weren't as bad as the spots on a titan, but somebody planting a melta bomb on your knee could really ruin your day.
Lloyd moved his machine back behind a mound of rocks. The ACS troopers dismounted and assumed covering positions as Lloyd contacted the regional commander and all surviving Mobile Cavalry Knightmare pilots.
"Commander Stel," He said as the image of the Mobile Cavalry commander appeared on his monitor "what's the situation?"
"As you know," she said "they're going to be pushing the northern enemy force down here soon, and we don't want to be here when they do. They're sending all the Revenants, though," she looked away from the camera and sighed "we really don't need all that lift capacity."
"So are we going to establish preplanned loading zones for the drop ships to come down on, or are we going to have them land and then move to their positions?"
"We will be moving to positions on the west side of the ridge for collection." Stel said "that should allow us to fight clear of the enemy's main axis of advance. There is an elevated region of flat ground there that should be large enough for the Revenants to land."
"And what do you need me to do?" Lloyd asked.
"Stay on your current task. We need you to retrieve the remaining forward deployed ACS units as quickly as possible."
"Understood." The window containing commander Stel's image winked out.
After the situation with the disc daemon, Lloyd had been reassigned to the northern face of the ridge, where the fighting was supposedly less intense, to rest. From what he had seen, the difference seemed academic.
Lloyd brought up his tactical display. It was a map of the area, overlaid with light codes representing friendly units and icons representing enemy units, color coded to represent probability of accuracy.
One friendly light code lay a bit far ahead of the Main Line of Resistance, blinking in a distress pattern. Lloyd went through the motions to confirm it as a valid target,
Lloyd looked over his sensors. He had the sensor that had alerted him to the presence of the daemon, the one that detected sorcerous energies, on a continuous feed to one of his monitors. It limited his options, but he wanted to know if another daemon was going to show up.
Seeing that both that readout and the more conventional scanners came up blank, Lloyd moved out. He began to accelerated, feeding power to the drivers on the feet of his machine. He crouched the Knightmare down as it moved; best that he keep a low profile.
He moved for a short time before a blip appeared on his auspex. Judging by the signature, it was a small unit of enemy 'infantry'. Still he thought, examining the readouts probably worth eliminating.
The group of cultists was moving in a low ditch between two stony mounds. Apparently, this group had survived long enough to realize that you didn't want to stick your head up in a mechanized warzone.
That made his job more complicated, but not much harder. Lloyd slid his machine slightly to the side, lining it up with a nicely sloped patch of ground. He considered the situation, and then entered a series of commands.
The right arm of the machine reached back, returning the minibolter to its cradle on the back of his Knightmare. There, a series of autonomous systems grabbed the weapon and drew it into the armored compartment, while a series of devices performed basic checks on the integrity of the weapon. Lloyd reviewed the presented readouts, approved them, and the minibolter cradle closed.
As the arm returned to its normal position, a series of plates slid down from the forearm and locked into place over the knuckles of the 'hand' of the Knightmare. Several internal bolts locked together and, and the more complex electronics came online, a shimmering field of blue fire shimmered into existence around the fist.
Lloyd observed the tactical plot for a moment more, and then decided the time was right. He routed maximum power to his drivers, and his knightmare shot forward. It raced up the slope and continued forward on a ballistic trajectory.
Just before he landed, Lloyd fired his shoulder mounted lascannons. The rays of coherent light reached out toward the heretics. One cut through a man longwise and expended its power on the rock behind him; the other pierced through two heretics before losing coherency.
Lloyd registered the slight tremor of the impact, though the shock absorbers and other, more exotic, systems built into his machine reduced it so far it was barely noticeable. As he recovered from his landing, he raised the rocket launcher on his left arm. It was a better anti-personnel weapon than the lascannons, the shoulder mount was more stable while airborne.
Lloyd launched a rocket and advanced on his ground effect. The missile impacted slightly off target, behind and to the left of, the cultists. While the remaining enemies, perhaps two thirds of the original thirty, began to recover from their shock, Lloyd struck. He swung his power fist in a long arc, striking two of the cultists.
The effect of several hundred pounds of metal cloaked in a disruptive field striking unshielded flesh is... unique.
Bringing his power fist back to a guard position, passing through another enemy's head in the process, Lloyd continued moving through the enemy formation. Backhanding two more heretics as he moved, Lloyd spun his machine around to face the back of the enemy formation.
Keying a few commands, the Lloyd fired his lascannons again, at a lower power level. The blasts tore through two more cultists, killing one and mortally wounding the other. One enemy advanced, using the flash from the blasts as cover. One of Lloyd's monitors focused on him, showing large melta bomb in his hands.
Lloyd brought his power fist down. The traitor, realizing his fate, detonated the bomb. A series of bright flashes overloaded the screens in Lloyd's cockpit, and the sound of the detonations filtered through the layers of armor around the cockpit, rattling Lloyd.
As his displays came back online, Lloyd scanned his status readouts while sliding his machine backwards. The damage was light, though the right arm appeared to be missing.
So Lloyd thought, that's what happens when you melta bomb a power fist. Interesting. He raised the missile launcher and fired on the heretics, the missile landing on target and disintegrating the majority of the enemy. As he finished the rest with his lascannons, something occurred to Lloyd.
You know he thought the Departmento Munitorum probably has a chart somewhere detailing damage sustained versus enemy casualties inflicted as a worthwhile exchange. I wonder what a Knightmare arm is worth.
Confirming that the immediate area was clear of life, Lloyd continued to move. The enemy battlefield discipline seemed to have degraded further, and other than the first, no enemy groups of larger than ten entered the range of his sensors.
As he approached the embattled ACS units, Lloyd's machine connected to the tac net of the suits, receiving targeting data from them. As the enemy concentrations appeared on his machine, Lloyd brought his machine to a stop and raised his arm mounted missile launcher.
As a rocket cycled into the launch tube, Lloyd calculated the launch angles, made a slight modification, and fired.
Freya considered the feeds coming in from across the system. The streams from Serneldra III and V were both several minutes old; he had no astropaths to allow her to work around lightspeed delays, and in any event, few could handle the massive volumes of data she required.
At present, several things were clear from his analysis. First of all, an Imperial victory on both Serneldra III and V was all but inevitable. The traitors had stockpiled too few weapons on III, and they had mobilized too few bodies on V, and had failed to account for Wyrmfall's resistance.
However, the situation on IV was much more uncertain. The majority of the Serneldran PDF and Crown Legion forces were there, but the enemy had mobilized more than three times as many people as on the other two worlds combined. They had much more heavy weaponry there, and the numbers to begin summoning daemons.
Freya, one way or another, would not go quietly. She wasn't sure why, but she felt much more attached to Xanthis and his grand vision than she had for any previous operator. In addition, from what she gathered, the forces of Chaos were unlikely to leave her intact, and the probability of her consciousness surviving prolonged control by the enemy was practically zero.
Freya was powered by an enormous geothermal power tap, but the majority of her prodigious energy budget was provided by a series of would be recognizable to a sufficiently skilled techpriest as a matter annihilation plants. They ran on deuterium and helium-3, so the Serneldrans assumed that they were plasma reactors, and Freya had no trouble allowing them to believe that.
At any time, she could, with the right codes and overrides, detonate them in a blast rated in hundreds of kilotons.
With a few hours of preparation, that could be greatly increased.
However, she hoped that wouldn't be necessary. The embryonic battleship approaching would, with luck, turn the tide of the battle. Freya served as more than a simple manufacturing facility, and there was a very good reason she possessed such a formidable self-destruct.
Some of the things in her deepest storage pits truly frightened her. She sat, quiet in analysis, for a few hours. Finally, as the escape shuttles for the ACS and Mobile Cavalry began their descent toward their targets, she reached a decision. She dispatched a servitor into one of the storage pits, and ordered the personnel of the facility to prep a shuttle for launch.
West laid down a hail of fire with his heavy automatic railgun, watching as the heavy hypervelocity darts ripped through the line of charging traitors. The weapon was technically designated for use against lightly armored vehicles. That didn't bother him the least.
A series of warnings appeared across his view. West ducked behind the rock he was using for cover a fraction of a second before a shoulder-fired rocket struck the top of the rock, presumably intended to suppress the heavy fire. A large, fast moving chunk of stone blown off by the explosion struck his helmet and bounced off.
West was glad he wasn't a Space Marine.
As he recovered, a message flashed across his visor. So he thought we're retreating on schedule. He raised the machine gun and fired another burst, then took off running.
The motions of an ACS trooper moving at top speed was rather different from those of any other infantry. They were much faster than most unenhanced humans, and they lacked the grace of Eldar skirmishers and the long stride of the Adeptus Astartes. Instead, they simply moved with long, leaping bounds, like man in a pressure suit moving in low gravity, but infinitely faster.
The movements of the newly rearranged ACS platoon played out on the screen. The long, strung out line of the thirty suited men, disturbing as it was, was a major faction of the barrier standing between the traitor army and safety to the south.
At random intervals, one of the men would turn to lay down a burst of fire, then sprint back to catch up with the rest of the unit.
"Attention all Armored Combat Suit personnel," a voice cut in over the suit communications "this is Melar Stay, commander of the first Revenant dropship wing. We are inbound, estimated time of arrival, fifteen minutes. Sending landing zone data."
A cheer went out over the coms network. Well West thought looks like we're finally getting out of this helhole.
The platoon continued its withdrawal. Several times, lasgun blasts or chunks of shrapnel struck West, cutting scratches across dents in the battlesteel surface of his suit. After days of rotating combat, the surfaces were barely visible.
"Alright, gentlemen," the regimental commander said, cutting into the platoon com net "good job getting out of there. Now, we're withdrawing everybody to the landing zones, and we need this unit to cover everybody else while they're loading up."
Fifteen minutes later, as the first shuttle landed, West took a moment away from slaughtering the traitors desperately rushing the loading troops to consider how lucky he was. He considered the Revenant dropship. The fact that it was simply here at all was pretty remarkable. If what he had heard was true, it was standard practice in many parts of the Imperium to simply abandon soldiers sent of forlorn hope missions like this one.
Furthermore, anywhere else, such a rescue would be carried out with Valkyrie VTOLs. They didn't have the Revenant's range or ceiling. They would have had difficulty surviving the insertion, let alone the loading of troops or exfiltration.
West watched as two of the twelve Revenants lifted off and began to boost away. He continued firing, watching as his comrades boarded the shuttles to safety. He had passed the heavy railgun to a man actually trained in its use, and had gone back to using his old rifle.
Sure, he had only had the thing for six months, but still.
He took care to pick the people carrying heavy weapons out of the mob and aim for them specifically. The majority of the cultists, who were only lightly armed, would be unable to present a serious threat to the drop ships until they were well within range of the systems on the landers.
West shot a man carrying a shoulder fired rocket.
As he scanned for another target, three more Revenants lifted off. West watched the dropships rise, cones of light connecting them to the ground as the rebels fired on them. That left seven on the ground, partially loaded.
He smirked as one of the rising dropships rotated and opened up with its multi-barrel bolters, cutting a swath in the advancing wave.
In the lull that followed the aerial assault, several more companies took the opportunity to load while the enemy regrouped. As the charge began again, West opened fire along with the rest of his platoon, edging toward the dropship that would lift him to safety.
Two further ships lifted off.
Several minutes later, as the last five shuttles were lifting off, disaster struck. Two of the cultists had lugged a plasma cannon onto the battlefield and set it up behind a wall of their fallen comrades.
They fired.
The sunlike ball of energy shot across the battlefield, struck one of the external drive stabilizers on a Revenant and exploded.
Emperor! West thought how did I miss that! He fired a long, undisciplined burst at the cannon team. As he fired, the plasma cannon lost containment. The weapon exploded, burning its operators to ash and devastating everyone around them.
Still, the damage had been done. The other four troopships began to take off.
The enemy closed in around the wounded lander.
"FRAK!" Melar shouted, looking at the damage readouts on his ship. "Engineering, what's the estimated time for repair?"
"We can't, not without base facilities." Engineering responded. "I can get her off the ground, but it'll take five minutes to cut open the drive and manually rebalance it. Unless you'd like to fly sideways."
West watched as a shower of rockets from one of the retreating ships blasted holes in the noose of traitors tightening around the remaining Imperials. It wouldn't be enough.
Then an idea came to him.
I'm insane West thought, con
He emptied his magazine at a group of foes, then stowed his rifle and drew his sword. With a cry silenced by his helmet, he drew his sword and charged.
The rear left drive pod of the dropship had been disabled by the strike. West was at the front left, and had to reach the right side of the ship. Unfortunately, the cultists were pushing toward the nose of the aircraft, and he couldn't risk spending the time to go around.
So that left going through.
West charged. He struck the first traitor, who he, with his armor, out-massed several times over. He trampled over the downed man and made a short, quick, stroke through the throat of another. As a woman carrying a meltagun turned to face him, he stabbed her in the chest, and backhanded a fourth cultist with his gauntlet-shod hand.
He continued to advance, though he was slowed dramatically as more enemies turned to pile onto him. One man raised his lasgun, attempting to deflect the blade with the barrel. West's sword struck in a shower of sparks, biting into the weapon and rendering the gun instantly useless.
Unfortunately, West didn't cleave clean through the lasgun. The sword caught on something, and the man holding it twisted it into a vertical position, pushed it to the side and flung it away, leaving west open and disarmed.
After that, two things happened very quickly. First, a large man decided that it would be a good idea to wrestle a man wearing a full Active Suit. However, before West could perform any of the seventeen ways to disable the man from his present position, another cultist, this one a woman, raised a flamer and doused him promethium.
This had two immediate effects. First of all, it incinerated the man clinging to him, which was convenient. However, it also had the effect of covering him in burning prothemium. West screamed and charged forward blindly.
One cultist attempted to bar his path.
He didn't last long.
West cleared the group of heretics, thick black smoke pouring off his flaming armor. Damage reports flickered across his vision, though he could barely see them through the pain of the burns covering his body.
He reached over his shoulder and grabbed his railgun, slotted in a fresh magazine. The Revenant could fly on two pods. He leveled the railgun at the front right engine pod and opened fire. Amazingly, the grenades for his launcher hadn't cooked off, and, as the magnetically propelled hypervelocity darts chewed through the armor on the pod, he fired the grenade launcher, tearing chunks out of the pod.
As he fired his last grenade and his magazine clicked empty, just before the pain from his burns overtook him, Steven West of the Crown Legion ACS saw the Revenant dropship begin to lift off of the ground.
And then, faster than any starship could hope to move, his soul rode to join the Emperor on wave of light.
"Sir!" The engineer shouted to Melar over his vox feed "someone took out the exterior engine. We should be able to fly."
Melar didn't need to be told twice. He opened all of the exterior landing doors, and the remaining troops covering the retreat swiftly made their way on board.
As the dropship began to shudder with the internal impact of various weapons, Melar yanked the controls back and launched his behemoth into the sky.
Mark floored the tank's accelerator, sending seventy tons of metal charging forward.
"Target" Melvin shouted "infantry! Range, one hundred yards. Fire flechette launcher!"
"Firing." Mason said, pressing several buttons.
"Hit confirmed" Maria said, looking at her gunsight displays. "Mason, give me a cluster round for the main gun."
Mason grunted, beginning the loading process.
Melvin opened a vox channel to the rest of the tanks participating in the assault. "All units!" He shouted "We're pushing these freaks all the way into the ocean."
The Serneldran Crown Legion First Armored Division moved out.
Somewhere in the Warp, Thlzhg'guuzzaaeranshhhdhirdhcogccanow, Keeper of Secerts, Greater Daemon of Slaanesh, watched the events unfolding on Serneldra with Displeasure. Fiendwar, and the thing called itself, had sponsored the Lord-Mayor of that world, pulling the strings needed to supply the man with far more resources than he should have needed to conquer a trio of measly backwater worlds.
However, this new governor had stepped in and thrown a wrench in the plan, and the Mayor was too incompetent to figure out a way to salvage the situation.
A surge of anger rose up in the monstrosity. It would resolve this itself.
Across the bridge of the Spirit of Serneldra, alarms began to wail at all stations.
"Captain! Spacetime warp detected!"
"Registering Warp energy spikes!"
"Phenomena intensifying and localizing!"
"Analysis Pattern confirmed blue! It's a Daemon!"
Xanthis sprang to his feet as the cry was echoed by the various bridge personnel. "What type of daemon! Power level? Estimated strength?"
"It's Greater Daemon. Affiliation Slaaneshi." The sensor tech said.
"Well, we're done." The tactical officer said "we have no chance to beat a Greater Daemon."
"We should retreat to Constantinople Base." The logistical officer suggested "maybe we can fix this thing up with a warp drive before the whole system goes to Warp."
"No." A new voice emanating from the bridge vox speakers cut into the conversation "the is a way we can win this."
"Freya?" Xanthis said "What do you mean?"
A door opened, and two servitors walked onto the command bridge holding a large box between them. They set the box, which was taller than a man, on the ground.
"With this" Freya said "You may be able to defeat the daemon, Xanthis." The servitors began to remove the front panel from the box.
As the contents of the box were revealed, a gasp went around the bridge.
Inside the box was a suit of armor. It had the same basic layout as an ACS suit, but the resemblance ended there. There were no ports, wires, or motor bulges, and rather than the joints being covered by flare plates and flexible nanomesh, the gaps were simply covered by smaller interlocking plates.
The armor was colored a slate, gunmetal grey which seemed to shine, somehow. Overall, the whole suit seemed... otherworldly, not something of mere men, as though it was forged by the Emperor himself for his chosen champions.
The gauntlets of the suit clasped the handle of a long sword held point down in front of the armor. The blade of the sword was just slightly shorter than Xanthis, and the handle added at least another foot to the length of the weapon. The blade gave the impression of flame frozen into metal, with the cutting edge honed to a razor edge, the metal of which seemed incandescent somehow, and the reverse was decorated with elaborate, flamelike barbs.
It was wondrous.
"It probably won't work." Freya admitted. "But with these, you have a chance of killing the daemon, Xanthis."
The world froze. Can I really do that? Xanthis thought, stumbling slightly and grabbing the arm of his chair for support. Can I be that man again?"
"I'll do it." Xanthis said. "There are a few messages I need to send first."
"Prepare for release." The cool voice of the capsule said as Xanthis and the pod plunged through the atmosphere of Serneldra IV. "Opening. Please have a pleasant flight."
An arc of light appeared around Xanthis' toes, parallel to his body, and rapidly began to widen. Gale-force winds found their way into the pod and buffeted Xanthis for a moment, though he barely felt them through his armor. Then the entire drop capsule split in half, and Xanthis fell.
Strength flowed through him from the armor. The sword was absent, but Freya had assured him that it was stored in the Warp, ten heartbeats away. He had called the blade into his hands once, and it had worked.
A series of modified drop pack fired, slowing his descent. Xanthis looked down. Below him, a thin purple miasma hung over the land, the literal touch of Chaos.
Xanthis fell into the smog, though it seemed to burn away as it touched his armor. An instant later, he struck the ground with a sound like a thunderclap, crouched with one knee on the ground and his arms thrust to either side. He thought he saw a momentary cloud of luminous smoke appear around him, but it was either imaginary or short lived. However, the warp mist seemed to fade around him.
He began the process of summoning his blade. He heard his heartbeat became strangely loud in his ears, and he looked up at the Daemon. It stood five times his height and had the vague form of a woman, but something, beyond the fact that it had four arms, off about it. Its face looked almost human, almost beautiful, but again, something was off. Its head was surrounded by a crown of horns, and it wore next to nothing on its strange body.
It held enormous swords in two of its hands, and one of its arms terminated in a long, whiplike tentacle. The fourth hand was empty.
As the tenth heartbeat thudded in Xanthis' ears, the massive blade coalesced out of mist and dropped into his hand, dripping with condensation.
The Daemon let out an almighty roar, and Xanthis took three quick steps forward and lept into the air. He flew toward the daemon, sword grasped in both hands and held behind his head.
"God dammit Matt Ward!"
-Thought for the day.
One last thing; the first person/couple people who can successfully guess what series I stole Xanthis' shiny new stuff from or the 'metal eating pskyers' mentioned last chapter, you can dictate an action or line of dialogue I will work into a future chapter. Or a virtual cookie. You pick.
Emperor Protect.