Chapter 17: The Final Curtain Falls
Alucard used his Aelderi form to evade the mad slashes of the Horror's claws, for what little shred of Walter remained only added to the monster's determination to destroy the World Eater.
Alucard kicked the beast in it's ribs when an opening presented itself, and smiled at the sound of breaking bones.
The Chaos Horror screeched in pain but was undeterred and attacked again.
The dance of death continued, each combatant either unaware, or uncaring, of the Major observing them.
The master of the Emperor's Children warband smiled upon the battle below him, his smile growing wider as he heard a door open behind him.
Governess Integra Fairbrooke Wingates Helsing strode into the command room and looked upon the Major, or at least, what was left of him.
The chaos lord of Slaneesh was little more than a severed head attached to a suit of tactical dreadnought armor by several wires protruding from his face, mouth, nose and eyes.
"Ah, hello Governess, care to enjoy the sho-" The major was interrupted by Integra shooting at him.
A private void-shield kept the Major safe and smirking as Integra unloaded her laspistol, reloaded, unloaded again, and finally, drew her sword and stabbed at the shield with enough force to break her blade.
"Hmm hmm hmm, if the laspistol didn't work, what made you think that your sword would?" The Major asked smugly.
"YOU COWARD! ARE YOU TRULY SO AFRAID OF A MORTAL WOMAN!?" Integra howled with rage.
"Come now Governess, we all have our shields, some use void-shields, others use World Eaters." The Major replied.
As the Major began to monologue, the battle outside raged on, with Alucard teasing Walter as he slipped from sanity.
"Do you still think it was worth it, all this trouble and carnage to purge the souls trapped inside me, leaving only those who choose me over the alternative and my precious battle-brothers from my days as Gabriel Angelos, and then sacrificing your very humanity with the hope that you could succeed where The Emperor's Children, The Imperial Inquisition, and an Ultramarine who fights like he trained under Cato Fucking Sicarius had failed, to make me choose between sacrificing the souls of those that I promised to protect or allowing myself to die, once more Walter, Was. It. WORTH IT!?"
The Horror's only answer was a rage and pain fueled screech as it attacked again.
Alucard used his current form's Banshee's Wail to stun it and continued. "Oh, is that question getting on your nerves, then let me ask a different one, of all the unwanted hopeless souls living upon this Hive World, how many died today?"
Alucard's eyes flashed an even brighter red and all over the planet's surface, the blood of countless corpses flowed like a thousand rivers towards Alucard, observing this, was the half daemon.
The warp spawn laughed as it drew a sacrificial knife and cut off it's own head, laughing as it plummeted into the flowing rivers that seemed to merge into an ocean of carnage.
The ocean met Alucard and flowed into him, seeing this, the Chaos Horror charged again, it's middle claw elongating into a massive blade that split the Eldar down the middle, only for it to recover instantly. "Too late, you only robbed me of a cultist's soul, and I have billions more to spare."
As Alucard continued to drink in the dead, the Major started to laugh.
"What the hell's so funny, do you not realize that you've lost?" Demanded Integra.
"On the contrary my dear, my sole objective was destroying the World Eater, and I just won." Explained the Major.
"WHAT!? what are you talking about?" Integra didn't want to believe it, but the tone in his voice was discomforting.
"Are you familiar with half daemons governess?" Inquired the Major.
"If you're talking about the one that greeted us, I killed it." Integra stated.
"As did Alucard the day we met, and yet it lives, for it was born of a human and a daemon, and thus it exists in the materium and the immaterium simultaneously, this is only possible on account of it's sense of self, but if a being has more than one self, then it cannot exist in this manner, and instead endures oblivion as it exists in the emptiness between real space and the warp." The Major explained.
Integra didn't understand at first, but then she realized that Alucard was feeding on all the blood spilt upon her world, including that thing's.
She turned to the monitor the he was being viewed on and saw that he had stopped feeding, his expression was that of a man who's belly had been cut open by an unseen blade, and in an instant, he vanished.
Integra didn't say or do anything, she only stared in shock as the Major silently smiled, the only sound that could be heard was a pain and rage fueled wail of anguish.
There was only a shred of Walter's conscious left within the Chaos Horror that he had become, only enough to comprehend that it was all for nothing.
Was it worth it?
Alucard's taunting words rang in his mind, it wasn't, it truly wasn't.
Walter remembered what he had learned of the Chaos Lord, during a moment of anger as they fought a broken warband of World Eaters who mistook Britain for an easy target after a devastating loss, Walter was able to see into Alucard's mind.
He didn't see Angelos or the Blood Ravens, but he saw his pain, that he surrendered to Governor Helsing because he had run out of ways to get himself killed, he had no purpose, he had no reason to exist, and he had no means of dying.
When he was captured by the Chaos Obliterator, the Major told him how to destroy him, he knew that Alucard would devour the dead on Britain, but the Major promised a countermeasure that would allow Walter the victory, to finally end Alucard's suffering, it would have been worth it... it would've been...
Walter was pulled from his thoughts by a shot to the stomach, slumped against a piece of rubble, Walter sighted his attacker.
With an iron jaw attached to her face, and sunlight gleaming off her black power armor, Hienkle realigned the sight of her sniper rifle on Yumie's killer.
Walter accepted his fate, but in doing so, allowed the final shred of his consciousness to fade away.
The Chaos Horror was unfazed by it's injury and ran off as if it were unharmed, Hienkle pulling the trigger just as it escaped her scope, missing.
She tried to track it movements, but did so expecting to come after her as mindless Horrors did, but this one ran into the chaos warship.
Hienkle prepared to pursue when a hand found her shoulder.
"Don't bother sister, our battle barge is preparing to destroy that infernal ship." One of the three surviving Ultramarines who finally regrouped with Hienkle explained.
"And what of the planet?" Hienkle asked through a vox system linked to her thoughts from the artificial jaw.
"Our readings indicate that the chaos threat has been completely neutralized, but there are civilian survivors in the lower hives, considering Captain Anderson's distaste of sentencing the planet to Exterminatus, we felt that we would limit the bombardment to the traitor's vessel." The astartes explained.
Hienkle nodded and proceeded to the extraction point.
Unaware of the impending bombardment, Integra finally regained her sense and glared at the Major. "There is no way in all of the warp's hells that you are leaving this planet alive."
"Then my last meal..." Smiled the major. "...shall be victory." As he proclaimed this, the floor just behind Integra burst open, Ceras emerging from it with a heavy chaos bolter. "Your orders, ma'am?"
"Execute that traitor." Integra said.
"WITH FUCKING PLEASURE!!" Ceras shouted as she began unloading the heavy bolter into the void-shield, the bolts exploding on impact but not causing enough damage to break it.
"Ah, it seems that the shield is too strong, shall I deactivate it for you instead?" inquired the Major.
"DON'T BOTHER!!" Shouted Ceras as she discarded the spent weapon and stabbed her chaos tendrils into the floor, several sounds of tearing metal could be heard until Ceras pulled up something, something big.
As the blur of motion faded, Integra let slip a look of surprise to see Ceras' tendrils coiled around one of the warship's artillery batteries, made to fire shells the size of a Chimera troop transport.
"HAH! I'll admit, I didn't know you were capable of something like that." Proclaimed the Major.
Guess he ain't heard da newz... Pip said in Ceras' mind. bitches luv dakka.
Ceras fired the massive gun, the shell shattered the void shield like it was glass and proceeded to strike down the Major and exit the warship, leaving a hundred meter deep hole in it's hull.
Ceras dropped the weapon with a massive thud. "Good riddance."
"Not quite yet, I'm afraid." both women were shocked to hear the Major's voice from the still clearing smoke.
The smoke cleared, revealing that the Emperor's Children Chaos Lord only lost his left arm and leg and that the left side of his face had melted from the heat of the shell speeding by him. "Heh heh heh, you need to work on your aim."
Integra's wordless response was to remove her coat, revealing a firearm, not a laspistol, but an older, bullet based sidearm.
She drew the weapon and advanced towards the Major who smiled as he bared his right arm, possessing large metal claws and a twin linked bolter.
Ceras prepared to intervene, but Integra signaled her to stay out of it as the Major fired.
To Ceras' relief, every bolt went wide. "Heh heh heh, you destroyed my targeting systems." The Major explained as he fired again, missing every shot until his ammo ran dry.
The Major let his arm fall to his side as Integra halted her advance and her weapon, only to swipe his claws at her face as she fired, costing her an eye as he was shot in the head.
Integra gave no sign of pain as her empty eye socket bled, only lighting a cigar as she stared into the major's lifeless eyes.
On the other side of the ship, the Major's private Apothecary busied himself collecting files and harvesting geneseeds from his dead comrades.
The Major had his fun, he got his glorious death, but I have no interest in meeting Lord Slaneesh just yet, I'll hide away in the lower hives and start anew, the Corpse's slaves haven't seen the last us, not by a lon- The Apothecary was pulled from his thoughts by something pouncing on him from behind, biting into his helmet with enough force to crush it.
The Apothecary could only scream as he was eaten alive by the Chaos Horror that had once been Walter C. Dornez.
Walter's tortured existence was put to an end as he was struck by the first orbit to surface torpedo of the Ultramarine's bombardment, the explosion alerting Integra to the impending doom.
"CERAS! WE HAVE TO GO! NOW!!" Integra shouted, and Ceras grabbed her in her tendrils before running full speed through the hole created by her attack on the Major, leaping from the warship without a second to spare as the last remnant of chaos' presence of Britain, save for Ceras herself, was annihilated.
The battle was over, Britain survived through the lower hives, which were valiantly defended by the combined efforts of the last surviving regiments of the Planetary Defense Force and the Imperial Guard, but the victory was bitter sweet, nearly 20 billion imperials lost their lives, the emerging survivors finding only corpses or mementos of their loved ones...as Integra found a broken 4 bladed ax.
Author's Note: And then there was one, I'll be a bit busy this last week as I prepare for my vacation, but I will find the time to conclude this story in the Epilogue, until then my faithful readers.
P.S. I know a blast from a gun that big should've deafened them for life, but so should've the blast from the one used in the anime.