Heat.
Light.
Sound.
Always in that order.
Always.
Aches always are accompanied after a particularly brutal death.
The madness sets in soon after, the last of the harvest draining away, brought to the forefront as humanity is stripped away by hollowhood.
Not this time though.
It is different.
Flesh nits cleanly over supple muscle and strong bone. Clarity echoed in open eyes, the core at its center so used to the pain of malnourishment suckles at a empyreal teat.
Power is here. Close, the sweet elixir of Estus flowing into the empty and mixing with Souls.
The blood runs thick in non-atrophied veins, and in that blood a savagery churns like water brought to a slow boil.
A rictus grin of madness leers out at a new world ripe with harvest.
The song begins:
Cross the fire take the heat the pain is but splinters see the kill a world of blood and thunder with the steel men and wanton lusts of the unborn kin see the mighty see the kill make the kill need to move the world is hateful and the sky is red the cathedral palace place of slaughter It resides in is a hell of war and combat the spiraling melees and rich death shrieks of the slain fiends and foes- there!
It is mighty- Burning wings and a mad celestial eye that stares at the steel man it holds in its grip of power.
It salivates.
It wants its power.
It Will Eat Its Soul.
The laugh of the truly demented cuts through the clamor of the lesser beings that deem themselves worthy of its presence.
The predator strikes.
…
Ilitarus cannot scream but would, It springs upwards, a blur of motion, snapping at the air and twisting upwards as It grabs his foot, and pulls Itself upwards along his back. It kicks off of him, horrible, mindless giggles and fits of snickering laughter echo in his ears. The pressure stops. He falls twenty feet, ceramite armor smashing into the stone dais and shattering it. He coughs up thick Astartes' blood, it leaks across his face. He stares upwards.
It is The Eater. Born again like a malignant curse. A resurgent Virus.
It fights a Daemon Prince in the throws of ascension.
Forcing himself to sit, Ilitarus stares in bewilderment, above him in the false sky of a warp rift the Eater sings through the air, a charnel blade he knew to well held in one hand as it slammed into a whirling screamer, pushing off its discus body and grabbing ahold of another, furies swung down from the rift overhead and squealed their impish cries, hell forged claws outstretched and questing for the Eaters neck. They were young and foolish spirits, and they fell to the ground below in ribbons, quicksilver blade twitching in a reflexive flourish that ended their existence in consumption.
The Unmaker ignored the eater, so glutted on the favor of its master that it did not see the looming threat of an apex beast until its shadow finally fell upon his celestial form- the grave spawned Eater riding on a carpet of Screamers, hacking and cutting madly at the manta-things as the swarmed about with there lamprey mouths and razor wings.
It jumped, twisting through the air and hacking at a flock of screamers that reared back over and arrowed into the Eater, passing by on either side as its ancient blade bisected them cleanly down the center, it was only now in such close proximity that the Unmaker was finally roused to the sucking abyss in human, and by then it was far too late.
Like a stone called back to the ground it landed on the back of the Unmaker and nearly lost its balance, grabbing ahold of a tuft of Feathers and swinging wildly as it angled its blade for a killing strike. The Unmaker shrieked from twenty different maws, no longer blessed with the tongue of sentient speech it let loose with the garble talk of Daemons. Fire erupted across its forms as a channel of warp power burst through its etheric body to set alight the ancient thing that clung to its back like a flea.
Through burning skin the Eater snarls in its own language, that of the mad beasts lost to reason. It struck out, blade hacking at the skeleton wings of pinioned feathers and with three hacking strikes the wing was severed, and It clung tight to the back of its prey as it cried out for vengeance as it fell to the ground.
Had the place they did battle in still resided within the boundaries of reality the impact of an ascendant daemon prince would have shaken loose the rafters, but as they were now it would be a barley noticeable tremor in a world lost to the mad whimsies of the soul.
The pulpy flesh of the warp tainted cathedral explodes into a fountain of blood and meat as the Unmaker careens into the ground, a mass of writhing tentacles erupts form its impact point, catching the Daemon princes and lashing at the mite who roe across his back. The eater is quick- still so sinfully quick and leaps clear, flipping through the air like a death cult assassin exulting in a dance of victory.
As it landed the Unmaker roared its outrage, the psychic scream rolled over the battlegrounds, staggering knights and daemons alike, it was a call of wounded pride and a promise of single-minded revenge against the fiend that wounded it. It tore away the tentacles that it had called forth to arrest its fall and crush the flea that had wounded a goliath, its legs reformed, splicing together into a single solid mass of tentacles that snaked along the ground and wound together into a mimicry of legs. The mutable grey mass of flesh that once served as a head molded into something that could have served as a face in vague description, the split maw opened and a tongue lolled sluggishly as it began to speak.
"I KNOW NOT HOW YOU CAME TO BE- WARDED THING. I KNOW NOT HOW THE CORPSE KNIGHTS CAME TO POSSESS YOU, BUT I SHALL SEE THE WARP RID OF YOU."
The unmake surged forward, single wing flaring brightly behind it as it raised its mighty claws, talon fingers crackling with power as the ground around the eater began to shape and mod itself to the whims of one of the warps chosen princes. Mighty and terrible was his power, and so long as they did battle in the bent reality of the cathedral he held mastery over all within.
A forest of tentacles erupted from the ground around the eater all of them tipped with bony barbs they speared downwards, the Eater dove forwards and into a roll, springing clear once again as it hit ground and that too turned into a forest of bladed tendrils snaking up form the flesh of the building. It leapt and twirled, kicking off of the trunks of massive snake lick rolls of sentient flesh. Its blade glimmered red with the light of a shadowed warp rift, and all about them was the sound of carnage.
Fighting through the mass of furies a purgation squad surged forwards to take up firing positions upon the fallen Daemon prince, only to be swept away by the hellfires of Tzeentchian flamers, runic armor blistering gold and silver in the reflective purple flames. A Psycannon thundered in retaliation amidst the conflagration with psychically charged bolt rounds that tore through the Tzeentchian daemons. As the flames died, from a squad of five only one remained standing.
A Terminator smashed through a throng of furies, stormbolter sewing havoc at point blank range as sanctified bolter rounds ripped through the limpid flesh of the bat winged beasts, as his final mag ran dry and his weapon fell silent he swung with his hammer, the cruel eagle head of the hammer smashed aside the chaos miasma that beset him, but he was alone and they were many.
Back to back, two interceptors dueled against the swirling hurricane of Screamers that flitted around them; a physical stormwall of Daemonflesh trapped them in an ever-closing eye. Their nemesis blades flashed out, glinting silver in the light of the warp as they funneled their souls into the cutting edges of their falchions.
Mighty Adaphal fought to contain the omnipotent Lord of change, its multihued feathers sparking with unreal energies as its staff came down once more against the hull of Adaphals sarcophagi. Stepping forwards and swinging with a blazing power claw Adaphal knocked aside the warp forged staff and returned the wound with the blade fist of his left arm, the coruscating psychic blade shearing through empty air as the Lord of change funneled the warp into its being and shifted through time and space bursting into reality behind Adaphal, who only had just enough time to spin on his axis and deflect the psychic bolt of energy launched at him from the beady eyes of the greater daemon. Fearing no evil, Adaphal charged once more.
A hundred more individual duels and dramas played out in the heated and pitched battle between Knight and Daemon, force blades cut through daemonflesh just as often as claw rent ceramite. Psychic powers raged against each other as the Daemons of Tzeentch battered the mental defenses of the Grey Knights.
These were all immaterial, as only one true battle raged at the center. A pale and naked human armed with a sliver of star-forged metal leaped and danced through a forest of living flesh. Serpent flesh grew from the ground, veins and bulging eyes wriggled and blinked sightlessly on a head filled with needles, they snapped and bit at the Dancer who spun and hacked in equal measure.
Swarms of Daemons headed the call of their master and swooped down through the ether to lop off Its head with a single pass from their bladed wings, only for the Figure to open its hand that held a flame that could never die and incinerate them with the actuation of its Will.
It darted through the ash leavings of banished daemons and vaulted over the armored forms of Knights, Its touch caustic to the holy wards. It sprinted, and leapt through the air, sailing over a pit of gnashing teeth and landing at long last before its Prey.
Two ugly Beasts stared at each other in loathing.
…
Moving with a swiftness that belied its bulk the Prey swung a claw of fire, to low to duck It jerked back, muscles twitching and contracting like an epileptic. It carried the body of a Human, but it was only a vessel, a suit. Soul Power bled off it like vapor, giving strength to otherwise useless muscles, forcing nerves into overdrive and linking synaptic connections on a preternatural scale. Its mind was insane, broken, twisted and malformed beyond reasonable comprehension by even the most well versed psychoanalysts- but in that mad cauldron of regret, depression, rage, and psychotic bloodlust that made up the emotional center of its brain was a phenomenally skilled, hyper reactive master of the blade.
The Daemon swung again, sweeping with the back of its claw in hopes of catching the Eater of guard only to be graced with the blooded edge of its blade- the sharp metal of ancient magics blistering the cut flesh of the ascended. A rolling howl trumpeted from the maws of the Daemon prince as magic terrible and old infected its blood, spreading pain through its system like nothing ever before- the Eater powered forwards as the Prince recoiled, going from standing to motion in the time it took to blink. It speared up with its blade, the ancient sword tasting flesh once and wanting another sample. It parted the rolling flesh of the Ascendant princes tentacle legs easily enough as it leapt past the Prince its blade flicking out to tear through the great writing mass of fleshy squirming ropes. The Prince howled again- the new bolt of pain marshaling its senses like a jagged spear of ice into its very core. It whirled around, spastic muscle twitches on its back forcing black, bony arms to rupture through the skin- flesh and muscle crawling along the surface and granting them power and motion.
The Daemon threw itself into a renewed melee, smashing the ground with a freshly wrought pair of slab fists. It had lost all horrific grace it might have possessed- whatever demoniac knowledge granted to this beast in exchange for its soul pushed aside in an effort to burry the pale creature that danced around it with mocking giggles and cursed sword.
The Laughing, the damned laughing, it was the mirth that drove the Unmaker Beast to such a Khornate Rage. It demanded fear, it demanded subservience, respect, worship or even hatred and loathing. It had gained the powers of the Dark Gods and through this power it had achieved immortality and boundless knowledge of warpcraft.
It would not be mocked by some puny Relic.
It roared from its fleshy maws, throats laced with veins of warp energy shrieking in both materium and immaterium. It was a sound that heralded doom across battlefields but to the Eater it was a beacon to a prize long sought and often dreamt of in waking memory. So what it its ears bled and eyes ran crimson? The Dance continued regardless.
The Prey Attacks, fists and claws flying at It in equal measure. There is no blocking the heinous strength that compels this beast but there is no need to force might against might when pursued by such artless strikes. A duck and a swerve and a step back, the Mystic blade of Astora leaving lingering wounds across the offending limbs.
The Prey ruptures along its hunched back, spine seeming to snap and split at the base as a column of new vertebrae explode out and down and then upwards as segmented tail sections bob and curl in on themselves, the end of the newly grown appendage terminating in a vicious curved stinger. Its transformation is not yet done, as a second and then a third tail split-rupture from the primary leaving a trio of wicked barbs leaking a truly terrible substance. The Eater leaps back, the flesh-ground where it once stood bursting apart in a splash of blood and gore as The Prey whips one of its stingers over its faceless head in a blur of raw and aggressive motion, the second and third stingers blur overhead forcing the Eater back three more times before finding its back against the still bleeding stump of a flesh tendril. The Prey bellowed its anger, stampeding forwards to crush the Eater, to rip it apart with its massive claws and add its face to its collection.
A burst of psychically charged bolts explode across the hide of the Daemon Prince in a cascade of holy golden fire, the flames sear across the mutable skin of the Ascendant Unmaker, burning away hatefully glowing runes and staring eyes, mouths twitch open and scream as another salvo streaks through the air and stumble the charging Prey. The Eater allows a momentary flicker of curiosity to surface in its haze of the Hunt, it sees one of the Silver Beetle men stumble forwards, armor cracked and worn, scorched clean by warp fire, in his hands a chunky cannon-machine that spins and glows with condensed power. He turns it on the Prey, electric blue bolts spit out and slam into the side of the Unmaker. A howled command in a language unknown and undesired to the Eater sets a hell-flock of screaming creatures upon the Beetle Man, his weapon snaps up and scatters the swarm but only for a moment and then they are upon him.
Stumbling to its feet the Daemon prince snarls and seethes, its hundred eyes searching for the warded things that dared hurt it- it finds it easy enough, crouched by a fallen Knight-
Pain.
The Eater Cackles and laughs, a child in a playground, it rolls its shoulder- watching as the Prey writhes and froths at its thousand mouths. The glittering Halberd of the dead Beetle lodged squarely through the featureless face sitting between its hulking shoulders.
The straight sword flicks outwards, flicking the offal off its surface it advances as the Prey writhes on the ground, magic's spilling off its surface and arcing randomly as a swath of mutations mold over its frame- it grows spines, then feathers and then hard scales. The Eater cares not, with a hungry need it jumps forwards- landing on one of its massive arms and then vaulting again onto its back, grabbing the one remaining bone-wing for support, it grips its sword tight-
-and cuts with callus efficiency. The Unmaker howls, rage and spittle bubbling from a thousand mouths along its rippling hide, eyes spear out warp lightning as its ever mutable skin changes and flows like water, hatred sparking off its form in incandescent blasts of power.
Warp lightning strikes the Eater, but it will not be denied, it sinks its blade down to the hilt, old enchantments burning and hissing in contact with daemon-flesh. It is not enough, Hissing, cursing, snarling, the Eater rips the blade free, the gaping writhing wound then filled with a sparking hand, there is a brief moment of illumination-
And then fire consumes what was once the Unmaker.
…
Duty comes at a price that the Grey Knights know all too well. A price payed in the corpses of fallen brothers.
As the silence known only to the survivors of a conflict falls, beaten, bloodied Knights rise from amongst the corpses of fading Daemons, and prepare to count the price.
The remainders of the Strike marines rise first, out of ten rise four; a Justicar pulls a brother Justicar from a pile of the dead. Force swords and halberds drip with daemon-blood among those seven only sixty odd bolter rounds remain unspent.
The Interceptors fared little better, of ten there was now six, survivors of each squad pulling themselves from the viscous traps of rotting flesh and felled daemons. Two brothers shove corpses aside, and pull free a wounded brother.
The Purgation squad suffers only one survivor. Battered, scorched and beaten, his psycannon broken and spent, the Knight stands alone atop a pile of bested Screamers.
The hulking silver grey of the Terminators is left to only two of the five that entered. Their armor is broken, foul warp magic's from a pair of Greater Daemons sundering them and their brothers. Adaphal holds one claw in victory- the other ripped away by the hell staff of a Changer of Ways.
Illitarus breathes, choking his pain down in great heavy gulps. He blinks away the blood and bits through the fading at the edge of his vision. He stares to the center room.
They have survived. They had payed the price. The Emperor's chosen has prevailed.
The silence is broken by a pitched cackle of laughter. Silver helms weary and dazed turn, searching for the source of such wild mirth. Blue lenses stare to the center of the corrupted cathedral as orgasmic, sensual moaning and hysterical laughter meld into one unholy cacophony.
The Eater laughs. Sitting atop a desiccated husk fading into white mist. Ether and faint screams trailing off the body of an ascendant being only to wrap around the glowing form of the Eater.
It had destroyed a Daemon Prince. Still bleeding with the power of the Dark Gods, still glowing with the gaze of its patron, it had been cut down- not banished, not sent back to its dark realm.
Destroyed.
Its soul devoured.
Lost to existence, digested in the gullet of a Predator beast.
"SLAY IT!"
Ilitarus bellows, half mad with the sight himself. He cannot stand, cannot move, his insides spilled out before him, his gauntleted hands stuffing intestines back into the jagged wound in his gut.
His brothers surge forwards, half dead themselves, scratched, scoured armor, empty storm bolter mags littered around them, with the decaying bodies of daemons, fleeing back to their hellscape in fear of the devouring thing before them.
A bolt round fired from up high slams into the Eater, an arm blown off as it is staggered backwards.
Evius leaps down from the flame scorched pulpit, and surges forwards.
…
Power.
Power unending.
So many souls. So full.
The hunger... it's gone.
It's sated. Its full, filled to the brim and in danger of spilling over.
It is rocked by a blow that would crumple an armored vehicle.
It rolls over onto its back, something warm is nearby, and it feels…
Good. Familiar.
The warm flames of the Bonfire sing their welcome.
A bellow of rage mixed in with it.
…
Ilitarus blinks blood from his eyes, blood drools from his broken nose and cracked skull but he ignores it; his captain still yet lives. Armor in pieces and shattered- nothing more than a scrap of metal at this point, but it does nothing to hold him from his objective.
The Eater is thrown back as Evius bulldozes into it, leading with a devastating blow- knocking the Eater to the ruined ground.
The cacophony of a Stormbolter unloading its munitions at point blank range graces his ears.
Strong arms pull him back, a syringe punches into his neck.
He sleeps.
…
Fire. Reload. Fire. Reload. Fire. Reload.
Mag after mag is fed to the dented and soot black yet still functional-mounted bolter, the aching pain pushed back, forgotten. A mask of stony rage eclipses Captain Evius' face; the Mass Reactive destruction he unloads onto the writhing body is his only concern.
It.
Does.
Nothing.
The Bolter rings empty.
The successive clicks of the firing mechanism sounding hollow in an empty chamber
Mad brown eyes leer up at him. A rictus grin of the truly deranged. Giddy laughter.
He sees the craters of bolter wounds seal and close, mended in the same time it took for them to form.
He falls to his knees on top of the thing; his armored fists rain down on its face. He knocks aside its attempts to block him, and shatters bones that heal the moment his fist leaves. Evius grips his hands about its throat, and squeezes, the spine refuses to break. The Captain levers his thumbs into its eyes, and tries to pull apart the skull, it refuses to move, yet through it all he remains passive, cold, like stone frozen in ice.
A Force halberd slams into the grin, psychic power encapsulates its edge, and it cuts deep through the spine of the Eater.
It does not die.
The wash of blue flame from an Incinerator engulfs that same face, skin crackles and chars, eyes boil and pop.
It does not die.
A brutal ministration from a Nemesis Daemon Hammer replaces the Halberd, brain and gore scatter along the ground.
It does not die.
He stands, and steps away from the carnage, the enraged shouts of his marines and the Eater blending into one. When Evius is fifty paces away, he turns and stares back at what remains.
Blades embed themselves into the body of the thing, a hammer demolishes its torso, a Psycannon pulps the body with cleansing bolts of pure psychic essence, and several different flavors of bolters empty into the ash.
He watches, he waits. He is stone.
"Brother Captain. We thought you dead." His men walk to him. His armor is torn, burnt, and broken. But he lives.
"He seems to have the habit of making us think that." Another with a torn helmet comments, a tired smile on his features, Evius recognizes him from Cor.
"Back away from me." He quietly commands.
"Captain?"
"Obey my orders, Brothers." The assembled Knights, Terminators, Interceptors and the like hesitate, and stand back. Ceramite feet scraping along the ground now free of warpflesh, they glance back at the vanquished Eater.
They find only a vanishing pool of blood.
Evius stares down as the stone beneath his feet melts into a ring of fire, two twin flames spike upwards and shadow his body in a tepid conical spiral about him.
He can hear the gasps, the shouts of revulsion and shock.
The disbelief and confusion.
"Brothers." He speaks to them.
"You must execute me."
His boot slams down on the hand of The Eater as it reaches up from the stone. An apparition becoming solid as it slides through the door of reality.
"I am tainted."
...
He sat in the Thunderhawk. At his side were two of his finest Terminators. Their Force hammers hummed silently.
He was stripped of his armor and wore only simple vestments- Chains.
Things forged from the armor of fallen Knights, powerful runic wards covered their surface. Microscopic engravings that depicted the acts of saints and the Emperor in their entirety, each link was a tome of ideals that banished the darkness. These were bindings used to restrain only the strongest of Daemonhosts.
They were now used to hold him.
The tragedy that led to this rewound once more in his head, and he played it again, tormenting himself with the sight of His brothers looking upon him in disbelief and anguish. He was no longer alive to them, he was dead- they wished he was dead for then the pain would be less. With how it sat now, he was the first. The first Fallen of the Grey Knights.
He had killed his Chapter through his weakness. It boiled down to that one simple facet.
The Grey Knights were the most powerful weapon available to mankind when it came to combating the Daemonic threat of Chaos. They were gifted with the finest wargear in the imperium, they were Astartes and they were psychically attuned to the warp- while this would spell destruction for any normal man or Astartes who were pit against the beasts of the Warp, the Grey Knights were different: They could not be corrupted. There spirits burned with a fire that could not be grasped by the neverborn, in fact, it was anathema to them, Lesser daemons of chaos simply breaking apart in the presence of a grey knight.
As a brother captain, he marched alongside his battle brothers against the Daemonic horde, he knew how the power of belief shaped the warp, he knew how a moment of doubt -a crack in something that was once absolute- can break an army before it even sees the battlefield.
He was the first crack in the Grey Knights belief.
He stared at the proof of that fracture across from him.
It wore the body of a young woman. Age hidden by a pair of ancient brown eyes that had seen the death of kingdoms and beginning of others. Their knowledge was tainted by a hidden madness that slept behind them, dirty red hair that was thought black or brown from the stains of blood and excrement.
It was a monster. It did not speak. It stole souls. It devoured Daemons. And he was bound to it somehow.