Sep 3, 2018
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Chapter LXXX: Homeward VI
Galtine,
I begin this with three apologies, none of which are directed to what you have discovered in your blood. I have and will presume upon you as is my right, just as you have and will presume upon me as your creator. Such is the nature of our bond.
It was not so long ago that we spoke last, but I say this while acknowledging that mortal time can be difficult. A moment so easily becomes an age, a perspective that I am aware is not shared by even those with whom I share a proximity of kinship.
There is a certain satisfaction in not knowing whether this will come as a surprise to you, an admission to a flaw even if it is not one I am ashamed of. It is a result of how I have chosen to live my long life and that life has provided far too many advantages for any apology to that end to be genuine.
Which leads rather well to my begging pardon for the fact that this missive will only be clear within my ability to be so. Ink is like word, embedded with what I am so as to be the truth desired by the reader, which has long given me license to be unfocused and perhaps overly verbose in text where I am reserved in word.
My next apology will be to your own mate for she might reason that I have given her a poisoned gift or that I had some deceit conceived to better utilize her to my purpose before I stepped foot on your world. This is not to be given as an apology for the result nor a defense of mine own self. I might well have undertaken such steps but I had not previously accounted for her presence, what she carries are gifts intended for what you might have been.
It was deliberate on my part to leave you incomplete, for I was uncertain whether you might catalyze and deemed it better to not introduce more competing variables than necessary. Upon meeting your mate, I was inspired to make an alteration to the plan I had earlier conceived and to confirm the approval you had spoken of in concern.
What has been done is and was always meant to be a gift, the Imbibed Sanguine which would have confirmed you instead cementing the bond between you.
My apology arises from my perception that you might no longer see it for what it is or the possibility that I myself did not account for the intent being perceived as malevolent.
I do not extend such an apology to you on the grounds of this.
This is a piece of what you are and what you are meant to be, that of myself which I spun your soul from and intermeshed with the simulacrum of a memory. I can no more offer you an apology for this than another creator might offer recompense for a disadvantaged physical characteristic.
I have come to know of a most charming if somewhat misguided belief among the Crusade. That you and all of your brothers are an alchemy, each a differing balance of my humors and the pieces of what I am. Although it is the grossest of simplification, I would say that that is not wholly mistaken in that each of you is akin to a facet of something in me I view with pride and a facet I view with shame.
Take your brother, if you wish to use the term. Horus is what I was to men, when I allowed myself to be free of the greater view and delved into comradery and the simplicity of having a foe of flesh before me. He is also my fear of failure, for whatever the risks, there is nothing so dreadful as a king without fear.
You are also a mixture, the only piece of me that could truly mesh with the frail imprint of mortality and the flaying of the Pariah.
In you there is my resignation, my impotence, my loss and my inability to accept them. You are the piece of me that fully grasps the scale of what we must do, the memory of the horror that ebbs at the shores of my certainty. You are my acceptance of the necessity for what I hold dear to perish, the tacit awareness that no aegis I erect will ever be without flaw. The part of my that recalls that this fact will bleed humanity, to add more souls to the cacophony asking why I could not do better.
That is what will befall your sons, for that is your 'flaw' as you might perceive it. The curse of never forgetting those who have been felled even as you become more unlike them.
Yet, you will find your sons to see this as a gift.
And it is the inability to be reviled at this fact that I must truly beg forgiveness for. I could not make you hate them and I could not make you turn away from them. Others will carry a necessary loathing for me as befits their natures and a disgust for other facts. But you cannot hate what you are.
For I do not.
I am grateful for these things.
A god does not know defeat.
A god does not know resignation.
A god is not haunted.
A god does not regret.
For as long as I am these things, I am no god.
These things are my mortality.
And that is what you carry in greatest portion, my mortality forged into a dagger. A weapon which knows and accepts its purpose and melded with the clarity to know when it is best used.
I could not help but find your name and epitaph fitting.
Galtine, the Retaliator.
A fine encapsulation.
Even as I write this short and admittedly inadequate message, I reflect on how well it illustrates my shortcomings. It is cold, self-indulgent, arrogant and not no small part manipulative.
In all other things, I have freed you to level judgement upon me and your peers. For it is fitting that in what of me is mortal, we should see that which we would be easy to renounce.
I will take the result of this Edict as your answer to this missive.
…
"What a prick," Morygen muttered as she finished reading the missive aloud before setting down the parchment and stretching over the couch to glare at me.
"Correct," I nodded while operating an esoteric equivalent of a high-potency coffee (not recaf) machine.
Our inner chambers in the Great Hearth were as disappointing as those on the Avalon, nothing but essentials and comforts escalated to fit our mutually inhuman dimensions.
"Why am I impressed?" She asked while hanging over the stone-shaped couch and scratching her cheek. "At this point, I am tempted to shrug and say 'because the Emperor' but that feels a bit much."
"It really would be," I nodded.
The Knight-Commander had delivered the sealed parchment along with the much more public edict and we had not read the thing until we had escaped to privacy.
"He more or less admitted to you being the most singularly unimpressive bits and using me as a correction," The red maned Seeker commented while puffing her lengthening locks out of her eyes with a breath. "As if telling us to help recolonize a Deathworld and breaking up our sons was not enough of a…"
She trailed off while waving while shaking a fist at the ceiling and glaring up at it as if my Creator might somehow be hearing her.
"His writing certainly lacks some gravitas," I admitted while pouring two cups. "It does wonders to clarify why he makes Pointy-Staff Doom-Man go when he cannot."
Morygen laughed at that and accepted a cup with a smile.
"Petty mockery aside," I quipped gently while sitting beside her and letting her use me as a pillow. "What should we do?"
The edict was an odd one.
We had the right to deny it.
That had been an amusing surprise to Krole when she had unsealed it to read it aloud.
But it was a mute one.
"You know what we are going to do," She grunted while sipping her coffee. "We are going to accept and do it with a winning smile as if this was not just formalizing what we thought we had some decades to prepare for."
She had a point and I might have been a touch ashamed that some vestigial part of me desperately and futilely wanted to rail against it.
The Emperor wanted the Legion to splinter.
Not into the dedicated detachments ahead of their own fleets as was the custom for the other legions.
He very explicitly demanded that three of the War Guilds be dispersed at all times as rapid-response forces to cauterize any potential wounds the Imperial Truth might suffer as a consequence of the Void's machinations.
Material and information would be prioritized to the legion as a consequence and it was relatively open-ended but it was still a problem.
It would mean that my sons would be fully devoted to cleaning up other people's messes for eternity and that our legion would not be able to muster in full.
"There are benefits," Morygen mused. "We would get priority in some of the neater things that you have told me about and it would certainly make tracking the others easier. Although I have no idea in how by all of the Stars we will manage to get anyone to go the most depressing star in the galaxy."
The second part of the decree revolved around the Pariah Gene.
That meddlesome gene which marked Calengwag as rare-unto-unique.
That gene which befuddled all save my maker and the ancient researchers of Calengwag (which he like-as-not numbered among) and was supposedly incompatible with Astartes due to the more esoteric components of the gene-seed.
"Well, we are all oath-bound to Him," I said with not small amount of annoyance by my standard. "I am sure that the ruling bodies will come up with ways to make 9-13 palatable."
The supposedly inexistent recruitment world of the Sisters of Silence was among the cardinal reasons for my beloved's antipathy towards the Anathema Psykana.
It was excusable for Blanks grown in isolation to harbor resentment towards the greater humanity.
She seemed much less willing to forgive those that had no just excuse for their world being a monstrous, haunted hive with no one to blame but themselves for their barbarism. Calengwag at its worst had not been reduced to that and they had to deal with the active threat of their world being Void-Tainted.
Being asked to help resettle and stabilize it to bolster the Sisters did not especially appeal to her.
"I guess it would give us an excuse to make them at least look different," She quipped.
I sighed at that, "That is a touch unfair."
"So is this situation," She rebutted. "And so was charging our sons with persuading their rulers that we are not in fact trying to steal their sons and daughters for some elaborate cloning program."
I resisted the urge to point out that cloning the Pariah Gene tended to have uncertain results and instead opted to muse as to the reasoning for the statement.
It was not the first time I was amused by the sheer oddity of the choices of the early settlers of Calengwag. Where most worlds of humanity tended to have been seeded by one ancestral group which in turn splintered into varying cultures, Calengwag had been founded by an eclectic group of settlers trying to deliberately unified identity.
It rather took the wonder out of the whole affair to translate Hollowborn to the mutated descendants of a coalition of what were essentially predominantly Irish, Indian, Japanese and Nigerian colonials obsessively trying to construct an idealized society through an obsessive fixation on Arthurian Mythology and notions of chivalry with a penchant for messing with Gene-dominance.
Aside from the commonality of 'odd' configurations, other populations in the galaxy tended to look a touch odd to the people of my adopted home.
Which sounded much better than inbred and utterly lacking in contrast as the less politic might have said.
It was a touch ignorant, but I did not mind it.
Those fools had given me Morygen after all.
"You know I do not like it when you do that," She grumbled while reaching up to flick my nose. "He should have included an apology about only appreciating me when I am annoyed."
"Oh?" I quirked a brow. "Would that not just mean that I would do so constantly."
I made a mental note that it was my own fault that he jabs were so well-practiced.
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Last edited: Feb 16, 2019
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Chapter LXXXI: Homeward VII
Wygalois had grown in the close to thirty Calengwag years since we had first come to the city.
Prosperity, growth and fame had drawn more souls to the capital of my homeland and new secrets had encouraged a growing population that would have deformed it were it not for Beneficent Silver's caring oversight.
The triangular, towering and overgrown five districts which had once been the city in its entirety had flowed outwards like a melting candle. Old spires had been disassembled while districts were assembled beyond, homes and commerce sites grew along with estates that were themselves shadowed by fortifications and transport systems.
The countryside had not been consumed by the growth in the strictest sense, the Fallen had a taste for the interplay between baroque and natural aesthetics which had resulted in Silver intertwining much of the countryside into the steel and stone of the growing city.
Our procession began at the edge of the city as was traditional for a Guildhost.
Seekers marched in formation beneath hovering stands sitting thousands as they rained flower pedals on the parties as they were cloaked in flowing capes bearing the silver-threaded brand of the guild, modified with the feat-markings. Each was garbed in the approximate uniforms of the guild fleet, elaborately worked with the appropriate thread of the Guild and intermixed with patterns speaking of their own status and lineage.
Oathmasters marched before each contingent of their oathsworn men and women, clad in masterfully crafted armor and mounted with the twin staves that suspended the knotwork banners of their guild and Sect-Master's carried the grandest standards as they marched before roving daises loaded with spoils claimed from fallen worlds.
In front of the Seekers marched the House Ailbe, which was to say the nearly six thousand Astartes that composed the Silver Guild. Much like their mortal counterparts, they bore no armor and instead favored cloaks marked with the Guild brand imposed on the bronze sun of Ailbe over uniforms. Like their mortal counterparts, their garb was also worked with marks of lineage. Only the Oathmasters and Sect-Masters carried the warplate of their legion, heads barred and hands wrapped around banners and eyes fixed forwards.
Morygen and I walked before our kin, armored and dressed as honor demanded.
She bore the golden tears under her eyes and like me her mane was pulled into an elaborate sun-shaped broach and gems signifying each of the seven guilds were woven into her hair. Our ears were bitten with rune-etched ring bands and heavy knotwork belts wrapped our hips.
Most important were the opposite banners, Morygen held the Silver banner which was a thing as ancient as it was esoteric in meaning and form, thousands of patterns lined the constantly replaced cords of leather, cloth and silver chain that composed its form. My own banner was of much newer make, no more complex that the seven interlocking brands of the war guilds surmounted by the Ailbe Sun and embraced in the wings of a twin-headed eagle to represent the legion in its entirety.
Now it must be said that the ceremony was not completely untouched by Imperial presence.
The traditional ornaments were well in attendance, but I found it heartening to Aquilla drawn over painted tears, Imperial ident codes were drawn in stylistic interpretations onto finely woven knotwork, a hundred little signs of embracing their new role.
But it was small, and I suspected that it always would be.
This was a ritual of Calengwag, a ritual of Hiber'Cale.
My sons and our Seeker Oath-Brothers were not present as Astartes and Imperial Army. They dressed and acted as Seekers have since days immemorial, my children were granted their place by virtue of their descent from me and marched directly behind me as was long the right of a master's kin.
These were not in truth an Imperial force holding a military parade, these were Seekers mustering to present themselves as the strength of their Guildmaster as he presented himself to a key ruler.
If one needed proof of the character of the procession, they just needed to listen to the music which underlined the cheering throngs above below and alongside the elevated roads.
Rich chants and the pounding of leather filled the air along with the blaring of brass.
There sources were the priests. Dozens of bands had been called together from a number of temples had been mustered, donning ancient regalia and painting themselves in white, red and black to symbolize ancient myths.
That gave me some humor.
To explain, it humored me because I was not alone with Morygen at the front of the delegation.
Our right was held by Legates Imperator, the weeping eye banner held aloft by Fabius while his Custodes brothers flanked him. They had been persuaded to accept gold-wrapped cloaks of crimson knotwork leather harvested from the Siege-Bear Death-In-Shadow, slain by the southern armies as a gift for the Emperor's favored guardians.
They hid their distaste rather well, all things considered.
Much less successful were the party to my left.
Knight-Commander Krole marched with four of her Oblivion Knights who were doing their level best to not look at their surroundings and a pair of initiates behind them.
To be fair, their leader had the default expression of someone who would look with the same mild disdain at an incoming cyclone torpedo, the legions of the Void and an unpleasant meal.
Her sisters were doing a less admirable effort. There was a tension in their movement and the mild wrinkling of the nose that suggested disgust while their eyes scanned their surroundings suspiciously. To say nothing of the scent and taste of their aggravation and the predatory beat of their hearts.
Morygen probably sensed the same thing given the half-heartedly repressed amusement on her face.
In fairness, they supposedly wanted our people. Did they expect that they would be able to merely take our flesh and blood without the people that came attached?
If they wanted blank slates that had to be programmed for the most basic things, they could go beg at Malcador's door for the dubious honor of having to create a thousand faulty clones for every functional assassin he was able to produce.
…
I supposed that to an outsider, it would seem disrespectful for a mortal king to not come to greet a Primarch.
The trouble was that Gwyar did not work that way.
A Seeker was not a noble, so as a Seeker, I was not a noble. Therefore, I could enter and leave the city as I wished without a prerequisite waiting ritual before my appointed gate as we are unbound. But therefore, I was no supporter of the King, so I he did not owe me the honor of a greeting at the gate as a host.
I was of noble stock by oath, law and marriage. Even if I remained unbound, those of my kin could not enter the city through another gate without spitting on all who came before me and renouncing House Ailbe.
My rank was above Oath-Master, so I was obligated to be honorably present myself to king at his earliest convenience as was proper. As Guildmaster, the king was in turn obligated to grant me audience before the end of the day of my arrival even as I was expected to present a proof of my own legitimacy. By doing this I showed that we understood and respected each other's time and more importantly showed that neither was asking the other to commit to false pretenses.
In turn, the king was expected to prove Gwyar's place as a Winter Court by mustering proof of its age and prestige. Which was the reason for the towering war automata that lined that walkways along with the armored forms of the armored Sapphire Guard and the aerial vehicles that flew in formations along the heavens. A guarantee of our safety both politically and militarily.
There were more minute systems at play which had narrowed circumstances to the time, designs of the formations and a hundred other permutations occurring which would be missed by outsiders.
So, the king was not being disrespectful to a Primarch and I was not being indulging.
We both had our roles to play.
The procession came to a halt a number of times before the appointed points, among these being the joining of the Regent-Master Igre took his place in the procession, the ancient raven carrying the banner aloft despite his age. Other stops had meanings of rank, memorial and symbolism which could fill tomes on their own but were ultimately inconsequential to outsiders.
A blind man could see the mounting irritation of the Sisters as the hours grinded on, until we had passed the inner gates of castle Wygalois as the last of the nobility concluded their rituals of entry and the Guild came to a stop before the cyclopean gate.
"Hardly Terra," I mused as we waited before the grand gate. "But everyone has their customs."
"Some would say that your people run dangerous close to transgressing against the Truth," Fabius commented, the philosopher-warrior putting no inflection in his tone.
It was not the first time that I was pleased my Creator did not assign me a Diocletian or an Aquillon.
"You are right, Fabi," Her finger rubbed the banner as she could hardly indulge in her habit. "Why, I do fear that we might be… religious."
She lowered her voice in dramatic horror.
The Custodian turned his head minutely to face her, "I fear that I shall have to turn over my helm to my armorers, I fear that my helm augur systems are failing. Terminus, do you sense a similar issue?"
"Yes, Shield-Captain," Another of the five nodded. "I fear that I can no longer detect taunting."
"I suggest the fault may lay in overexposure," Phoebe added in with a begrudging tone.
"Careful," Morygen clicked her tongue. "People will think you have personalities in there."
"Mayhaps you have merely misplaced your excess of Sanguine," Fabius rebutted.
I wondered if my father had planned for that, giving me a quiet thinker with just a touch of humor along with four nuts for Morygen to crack.
Pride might be a flaw of mine, but I could admit that I had been mistaken in summarizing the other Legates Imperator as bricks.
Not that I would ever tell them that of course.
"Oh my, that's where you are," Morygen turned to regard the Custodes in mock surprise. "I had always assumed that you were just a piece of furniture."
"I am surprised that you held still long enough to notice, my lady," I suspected that Fabius was not alone in having come to some ability in our tongue.
"Well that is just unkind," Morygen sniffed indignantly.
"Truly," I breathed. "We are such a refined and noble company."
My beloved reacted by sticking her tongue out at me.
"Truly," I repeated wile effecting a dry look.
"Dignity is a difficult thing," Anahit spoke. "I earned two names against rodents, I am still unsure if others would perceive that as honorable."
"Vermin?" I asked in mild curiosity.
"A subterranean conflict in the Unification Wars," Fabius supplied. "It is not spoken of often, but the Warren-Lords were known to ride mutated rats. It is not spoken of often given the unfortunate connotations."
"You will enjoy Coin, Legates Anahit," I offered the Custodian a smile. "They are know for their rodents of unusual size, they might even find you more impressive for it."
The quietest of the Legates made a sound disturbingly close to humor.
I wondered what he and the Guildmaster of Emerald did in their time together, like as not it was exchanging cryptic commentary interspaced with long silences.
The conversation faded as the great gates came open once more and the march resumed.
I did not notice at the time that I sucked in a breath as I starred at the ruined giant behind the throne.
There was always something uncomfortable about speaking with a man that you had unwittingly orphaned.
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Chapter LXXXII: Homeward VIII
It was difficult to stay in the present when looking ahead.
I recalled the scent first.
The void always smelled like flesh cooked wrong, spiced with something evil and drenched in filth. With it was the much more natural tang of mortal sweat and the blood which poured the churned mud and debris below as daemon and man alike were ground under feet by mutually desperate forces, seeking to climb over each other to reach their objective.
The wind had tasted like ash that day, the charnel scent of burning flesh intermixed with the firestorms that had burned the once great forests to the black fields beneath the feet of the combatants. The Voidspawn had been legion, too many to maintain a proper formation as the army had broken into spheres of blades like rocks against a river tide.
A grey hellscape that reached even the heavens as the entire migratory fleet of the Iolair Muruchan warred above us against hordes of winged monsters, burning ships, disintegrating devil-flesh and stray missiles crashed against the fields to punctuate the roars the men, beasts, monsters and daemons that tried to destroy each other in a pandemonium of violence.
All was for what lay before us, to advance towards the horizon-spanning pyramid we pushed, ripping at the seams in sickly grey light as if it were peeking through an opening door.
We all knew that it needed to be stopped but that had been beyond me.
There had only been the desperate need to survive, swimming across the fields and killing with each step, each breath, from blade-shell to blade-shell. Every sense I had in my body was pushed to its inhuman limit by the endless tide, abandoned by Merlin as the constructs took my blood to bolster the allies that stuck to my anchor lest they be ripped apart by the hours of turmoil.
Relief had only come with the bellowing cries of the charge that broke the into the enemy, at their head the white-bladed king.
I blinked away the memories in favor of the present.
The throne room had remained largely unchanged compared to the city beyond, still crowded by the multitudes of nobility, priests, officials and now journalists.
The only changes were those who sat on the thrones.
The gancean monarch seemed to be trying to resist the urge to fidget as we walked towards the throne. Finely dressed in a gown which while flattering, seemed a touch oversized on the king's petite frame, that he was clearly glancing nervously at the greater throne behind him was worrying.
King Gaera III was named for his great grandfather but he lacked the idealic nature of his forefather.
The youth of nine had come to the title early and it showed from the discomfort of the young female atop the highest seat of the many-tiered throne.
Princess Gaera had been to my understanding a promising girl, bright and relatively well-suited to rule even if her father had problematically failed to produce more children before his death a year prior.
But she had been soft, impious, untested in war or trade and worst of all, sorely lacking an heir.
Things that could be rectified in a young princess were a problem in a king.
But her father had died too early and Princess Gaera had become King Gaera III. Becoming a man be custom just as one of the sons of the nobility would eventually become his queen.
It was likely an odd notion to outsiders, one easily misconstrued as bigoted or backwards. But it was the way of things in Gwyar and incojsequential beside his insecure bloodline and lack of knighthood.
While a tiara made a facsimile of horns wrapped in chains, Gaera was unaugmented. He did not have the links to his ancestral past his predecessors had, no gestalt memory inscribing the prowess and martial character of the Immram.
Something friend and foe alike would well know.
Which left me to deal with a ruler who was uncomfortable with both his station and legacy.
We came to a stop before the throne and behaved as was expected for our stations in our capacity as Seekers.
Banners against the right shoulder, angled against a hand lain over the heart while those of lesser rank dipped into a sustained half-bow.
Neither the Sisters nor the Custodians bowed but they were direct retainers of the king's liege lord so that was to be expected.
The twin priests began their benedictions, but I ignored them, not out of malice…
It was just difficult to focus.
The Immram loomed like a legacy over the proceedings.
The knight stood tall over the battlefield, striking down monster after monster, their cyber-daemonic roars ripped out of them as the titanic sword gutted them with contemptuous ease. The rich panels on its armor ran grey with the blood of void-tainted machines as it led an armored phalanx into the maelstrom of violence.
"You are late!" I heard Morygen roar over the vox with a mix of grim humor and relief in her voice.
"A king is never late," The machine-distorted voice of the Last Knight said between strain and humor as it ripped open the bowels of a great borrowing machine, spilling the bones and degraded flesh of the ancients onto the field in a nauseating torrent. "He is always on time."
"Agitation! Humor if survival is granted!" Merlin growled and hissed in his quartet voices. "Warning! The Authority is verging on systemic collapse! Manifestation imminent!"
"The god is right!" Dinada hissed over the vox, his voice heavy with exhaustion. "Reinforcements or not, we need to end this soon!"
They not wrong, even with the return of the war hosts and the full-force of five migratory fleets, things were not looking up.
There was a welling fear, yes fear, that we would fail as we reach towards the cracking edifice just a few hundred meters away.
"We are not even in the Ruin," Trystane laughed manically from my side as he cut the throat of something which I could not identify. "Unless they put the generator by the door, we are not going to get there in time."
Any response I had died on my lips as something rose throw the grey cracks on the temple.
Claws were latching onto the edges of the light and pushed as if opening a door.
I could still see the scars of those claws on the reposing ruin that had once been a Knight Titan.
"-And so it is our honor to greet the Galtine as he returns to us from the stars in service to our common lord," the youth on the throne was finishing his welcoming address as I once more shifted the bulk of my focus to the present. "And humbly request that the banner of our Emperor is given its rightful place."
That was scripted of course, so the Legates Imperator knew what to do.
The golden warriors ascended the steps of the throne, passing the royal family and priests and the king himself to hold the Emperor's banner above the proceedings.
I quietly let out an imperceptible breath of relief that the speech was delivered soundly.
The king had a good speaking voice at least.
"It is our honor to hear your tidings, Grandmaster," The king smiled with an open-armed nod before resuming her seat and opening a hand to concede the floor. "Tell us of the Starpoints gathered against the Void."
The monitors switched to us as I bowed my head.
"Your grace, oath-kin Hiber'Cale," I began. "Since last I stood in the shadow of Immram, Silver has in glory participated in the binding of some ninety worlds. Seventeen-fold accursed plagues of ill-faith have been purified by destruction and foes who are neither kin nor foe have been vanquished beneath our arms."
Rounding down was traditional after all.
My words were accompanied by the movement of Seekers as they approached their troves and lifted proof of their deeds for the hidden projectors to broadcast.
"And the names of these foes? The places of your feats?" The king asked with a thoughtful look in hazel eyes.
Morygen cleared her throat and began listing the worlds and battles which had come in a mere five years, in addition to the disposition and identity of the foes.
While she did so, my eyes drifted to the noble seats.
I could see the House Ailbe in attendance.
Morygen had opted to speak with them on her own once I departed to oversee the remaining celebrations, but I still felt some ire that they had thought to show their faces, to profit from ties to our blood.
She had more right to the matter when it came down to it and more practically, I was obligated to travel east before the next sunrise.
"Most impressive," The King of Gwyar complimented some time later when Morygen finished her recounting. "Such glory does honor to all of our people, but we are most endeared in the vindication of our forefather's oath-brotherhood, he surely looks with approval on the actions of his dear friends."
I refrained from a grimace at the obvious filial piety. There was nothing wrong with the concept, but a blind man could see that he was trying to boost his position by reminding my ties with his ancestor.
It was comforting.
The knight charged the behemoth without a moment of hesitation.
It would be called the Maw of the Void in future years, but we had no name for it then.
There was nothing to it but 'abomination', a titanic construct of sublime construction fused with inhuman flesh, winged with the bleeding wounds its passage drew from reality.
Its roars were the death of worlds and lesser spawn and human alike perished beneath its miasma.
And it its heart was the foulest of impossibilities, the pinnacle of the depravities that had cast down the Fallen.
Against such a beast, the knight moved as if it were merely another foe. Ancient technologies fueled by Blank-blood pushed away the twisted abomination's aura while the other war machines and bio-beasts charged behind it.
There had been no final words or goodbyes, all that the surviving Seekers could do was raise our weapons in salute of the dead men as they sought to wipe away the taint that had so long haunted our world.
"It is I who would speak with honor still of the Immram," I smiled much more genuinely than I had thought I would. There had been a sick realization that all of the ghosts that haunted me were already fading from living memory, that the sacrifices of my kith and kin were already being cast aside in favor of more recent honors.
The line of Gaerys should feel no need to claim a part in my victories, his should be eternal.
It was good that his name continued, it was good that we stood in the shadow of his armor.
Who they were might have been forgotten in the specifics but at least they lived on as symbols of power and in traditions.
As long as the Immram sat there, as long as I lived.
Gaerys would not be dead.
"And it is honor of my dear brother-by-oath and your father's oaths to our shared lord that I bring you his command," I said with due gravity, the king had been briefed of course as had all other rulers on the planet.
"If his supreme grace and Anathema to the Void has commands for us his humble servants," The king spread his arms. "And he presents them through the Galtine Incarnate, we may only inquire what he would ask of his faithful servants."
Proper deference there.
Which had to be met with equal magnanimity.
So I reverently produced the gold-threaded scroll from my armor and unrolled it to present the imperial seals before the throne and projectors.
"My Lord father-by-blood, Master of Mankind and Chief Foe of the Void, presents a hard gift. He speaks of his Talons, his Voidbane knights," I indicated with a hand at the Sisters of Silence. "Only one world in the Imperium boasts the gifts of our blood, a hard home known as 9-13."
"He sends the mightiest of his knights in person," Morygen continued with a nod to the Knight-Commander who looked like she was waiting in line at a deli to my own annoyance. "To plead the case of that world, for it is a place fallen in folk and means."
I could scent the signs of annoyance among the Oblivion Knights at that comparison. It was fortunate that the elder Sisters had exceptional restraint so no one else noticed their irritation.
"His Imperial Majesty would have the blood of Calengwag flow as one with their own, for these noble knights to be renewed and for their ways to be as one with ours," I said with a hand raised to the Immram.
The wording of the Edict did not precisely say that but it was formal and vague enough to be incredibly respectful and befitting the situation.
"We are requested to give of our flesh?" The king asked with a thoughtful expression that for a moment reminded me of his forefather.
"He would grant the wealth and resources needed to resettle the world," Morygen responded. "A gift for those willing to brave the dangers of a new world, yet wild and untamed."
The king nodded and rose up.
"I must of course, request that none free themselves by means of coercion," It was the duty of a lord to not sell their own people. "But a gift of land and means, that is surely a fine reward for those who would seek their fortunes among the stars!"
The young king smiled as he raised his arms high, "What say you, dear kingdom? Will we traverse the stars and spread our once-more remembered wings and give to these tired warriors our reformed vigor?"
The crowds roared approval as was proper.
"Let the legacy and vindication of my forebears be like law!" The king roared. "May the Void pay a thousandfold for their blood debt to our dead!"
I cough through the choking smoke that would strangle a mere mortal as I pray open the ruined machine.
The flesh on my hands hiss as they burn but they rip through the panels with ease.
His form is limp inside, blood spreading like wings from where the claw had split him open.
Cloth, armor and meat had been ripped cleanly through.
His legs had been held in place by the restraints but the pelvis had been pulled forwards by the force of the impact, spilling the viscera out.
But his hands were still locked on the controls.
His blood-shot eyes were still open.
A rictus grin on his face.
I smiled despite myself.
The fool had died felling a god.
He was allowed to die laughing.
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Chapter LXXXIII: Homeward IX (Kagu'Tsuchi & Morygen PoVs)
Initiating patterns 0001-Alpha through 8034-Epsilon.
Initiating...
Error.
System flaws beyond tolerable limits.
Isolate data-files for archive.
Run new simulation.
Baseline configuration.
0009-Zeta armament. Cognomen 'Seeker'.
Initiating...
Error.
Strike.
Fracturing along servo-muscular cording.
Parry.
Aggravated damage along gauntlet playing.
Overhand strike, introduce standard deviations from perfect arc.
Residual tremors trigger panic-reflex in brain stem, heightened chances of disarmament.
Logical flaws consistent with human anatomy.
Alter baseline anatomy, Pattern: Astartes.
Blessed Armament. Cognomen 'Crusader'.
Initiating...
Error.
Force multiplication error.
Accounting aggravating factors.
Severe fractures throughout anatomy. Subject termination.
Critical error save for scenario Beta-0023 through Beta-0092.
Probability of subject survival suboptimal to resource investiture.
Kagu'tsuchi felt a pang of annoyance as she disengaged her calculative components.
A pulse reactivated her ocular components and she regarded the weapon on her principle workbench.
Standard human language referred to it as a halberd.
The structures within the receptors streamed relevant data in rivers of glyphs.
A long blade of white metal rose from a short haft wrapped in supple leather.
Most of the machinery had been internalized of course, the power pack worked into the heavy bulk of the lower blade.
She found the image pleasing, a jolt to the pleasure receptors of her organic cranial components.
Which was a minimal return on the spike of annoyance she felt.
The Vengeance-Pattern has been trivial according to her earlier assessments and the data she had been blessed with had confirmed the hypothesis.
The flaw seemed to lay in escalation.
Five standard terrain years had delivered steadily diminishing profits.
Systems delicately tied to her hippocampus flared and pulled the the metal mesh of her 'lips' back in a smile, exposing rows of cog-shaped diamonds.
It was thrilling.
In eighteen centuries of consciousness, she had not been so consistently met with failure as when she attempted to marry the secrets of Mars and Calengwag. Each failure was a precious new awareness to add to her sum of knowledge.
She eased herself from her bowing position, four arms touching the workshop floor to bow raised herself and bow to the sacred place of work.
She padded her robes in a treasured voice of habit. Fine and unaugmented save for the fire-retardation always needed to tolerate the high temperatures she preferred for her workplace.
The Magistrix idly splintered her consciousness between her auxiliary cogitators while beginning a compilation of necessary augkentations.
The time docked around the world was much welcomed.
It allowed the time to grant some oversight to a number of much more profitable projects to shift her focus to.
There establishment of her industrial colony on the resource-rich fifth planet of the system. That project alone promised considerable resources and as of late, most every Arch-Magos had been looking to expand on their powerbase. It could be deemed a Forgeworld in a century's time by current projections.
Also interesting was keeping pace with the colony-requisitions and cultural conversions being undergone by the eight auxiliary worlds sworn to the Second Legion. Armor, arms and material needed to finish reshaping them into a suitable match for the principle auxiliary of the legion. That conversion would still require twenty solar years to achieve the established quota.
She also diverted some attention to the final modifications to the Legio Vexos. The legion princeps had already made their ire known for the prolonged period of their upgrades and some two dozen engines were already being loaded onto their tomb ships.
That had been an enjoyable project, overhauling the titans had been a marvelous task.
All proper of course, requests issued with a proper application of packet-donations to expedite the procedure.
The newer iterations were so childish in that, they would hungrily devour some old and pitiful scrap regardless of its proper import.
Rediscovering ancient fusions and presenting the finest iterations for the Omnissiah's foxhounds. Cutting away muscle bunches in favor of sleeker, stronger forms. Stronger engines unfiltered so that they could roar the fear of the material into the immaterial.
And even that was just one.
Just one among so many more projects.
That was what had drawn her out of her wanderings in the depths of Mars, to return to her forge after years, muster her influence and leave Mars.
Riddles, mysteries and a chance to outwit gods, if we do not get eaten or murdered first.
A curious offer from a curious being.
Not to say that it had been a purely emotional response.
The profits were not inconsequential and the meeting she had been granted with the Omnissiah itself had been an evident pleasure, to watch with cycling minds the multi-faceted gem that incarnated the Motive Force.
The Magistrix idly morphed her wall into a series of projectors, each illustrating one of the feeds coming from the world below.
The second iteration of the Omnissiah's will would be at work for months still before they returned to the Crusade.
Kagu'tsuchi cursed in frustration as another of the cogitator growled in anger and pushed its analysis to the fore.
The suggested augments would result in a complete automate being a more economic result, which would cost the intuitive grasp that she had designed it to serve.
There was only one feasible solution.
An improbable one.
One which would require approval.
There was nothing to do but open herself up to the Noosphere and issue a summons.
Stalwart Gold.
Each mind in the plane of mechanical thought was something like a small current, a sphere of identity and thought like a base lifeform in the seas of ancient Terra.
Small things easily dismissed.
Calling on the blessed spirits of the Second Legion was like speaking to the sea.
The toughest approximation one might make to one of the unaugmented is to feel the gaze of the sky above them come squarely on their own person.
Something so vast and incomprehensible that the merest facet of its thought was a multitude of answers and more questions than most adopts could compile in a lifetime.
In the noosphere its voice was that of a deity, the merest thought was a tidal wave she must hold against.
You summoned?
Her response was to cycle through the analysis of the trials, a query in and of itself.
The ocean of thought's processes was instantaneous, an answer before the last file had been transferred.
Difficult.
That was not an answer and she chimed as much.
Kagu'tsuchi had chosen her designation for its accuracy.
Her mentors had resisted the purge of emotion, viewing the purge of perspective a theft to the greater contrast of knowledge.
Hers was an obsessive soul, a fiery smith like the burned god of old she had named herself for. She would not be deterred by inconvenience or discomfort.
Your proposition is reasonable, word will be spoken to the Legion Mother.
When? She asked impatiently.
Soon, I think, the machine-avatar laughed like a thunderstorm. After she finishes her business.
Business?
She is killing a relative.
Odd creature.
…
The reports were not new.
They had been building for years.
Corruption, crime, excess and shame.
Murders, patricide and regicide.
All, forgiven because of the name.
Ailbe.
Morygen would not call it a duel, calling it a duel had a tone of fairness that did not really fit the situation.
It was an execution.
And a lesson.
"A-a duel?" The youth on the throne asked in shock.
Antur did not live up to his namesake.
He had been a thin little thing, lazy and spoiled.
Morygen had not credited it, she had seen grown (and far fatter) men that fit that description and still reveal steel when pushed.
She assumed he would grow more fitting in time.
She had only been right in his shape.
The current Lord Ailbe had only improved in growing handsome and strong, round-shouldered and with a rather charming strand to his face. His eyes were still the pretty blue-green of her cousins and his mane was a nice shade of red pulled back into a short tail like her mate.
Which was the sum of the positives she had for her cousin.
He still dressed in far richer garb than the meeting called for, long furs that were layered unseasonably heavy and rich enough that he probably had to hunt down an entire forest. The gems and knotwork were layered to such a ridiculous degree that even with her eyes they were a bit of a pain to tell apart.
It would have been a ridiculous garb on her father-by-law, much less the Lord of house Ailbe. It was the sort of thing that the Goat would find excessive if it could even perceive her nephew-by-blood.
But even that would have been tolerable.
He had received her lounging on the throne of her house like he was on the verge of a nap.
With consorts at his feet and a rather regretful looking noblewoman she suspected was his wife-by-oath.
And he did not even stand.
But the worst, the worst were the halls.
Crime had worsened in Coilmin after the new Antur took power. But they would be cleansed by the Fear Gorta and the servants that ruled the approved thief guilds.
The damage to the halls was not so easily fixed.
Hundreds of generations of restraint and elegant flourishes of elaborate design had given way to the preserve and the grotesque. Rich tapestries of lurid scenes, statuary of the new lord and the smells of overly exotic foods.
All of that alone would have been to sufficient to issue the challenge the moment that her introduction by herald was done.
He could have shown a spine and have risen to her challenge.
Instead he was trembling like an especially drunk Seeker after surviving her first venture.
"Yes, a duel," She smiled as she crossed her arms. "Are you deaf, Antur?"
"Why?" The youth asked in confusion.
"Because you are singularly unworthy," Morygen smiled. "There are more than enough lords of our house that were not especially worthy. But we had made your dear father swear an oath to be worthy."
That got a reaction out of the boy.
"You dare?!" He roared with all of the ill-thought-out idiocy that came with a comfortable noble in the half-made state of the teenaged years.
He is no more than twenty-six by Terran standards, Morygen noted. I was better than him and even with a sister to care for, I was an idiot at that age.
At least he was smart enough to pale when he heard his petulance and remembered who he had shouted at. It was like how a dire-squirrel flared its crest to intimidate its foes purely by reflex.
It makes sense, Morygen thought. Prydwenden was always a bit of a soft-touch, but it had been his right to succeed.
The Ailbe had never been especially good at establishing branch-families, the eldest and rightful one had been headed by a competent cousin.
The only doubt had been his eldest child.
His weak, spoiled and hedonistic child.
But they had foolishly assumed that an oath would be sufficient.
"Yes, I do dare," Morygen smiled as her ten guard-sons tensed, and the scent of fear came from the Ailbe guards. "You were charged with my sweet nephew-by-blood."
They were not really necessary, she could easily kill them all in the time it would take her to breath.
And she needed someone to project her anger at.
As he flustered excuses, Morygen devoted part of her attention to wondering if that meant anything.
Walwen's predicament had been her own fault.
Hers.
They should not have trusted a seven-year-old to her cousin, regardless of the protective oath both Prydwenden and Antur had sworn to look after Walwen.
He had been their responsibility. Their first son and beloved nephew both, gingerly gestated after he was carved from her dying sister for years until he was born from the machines they had salvaged.
And they had left him because of their own oaths.
Was it a wonder that he pursued them?
It was unfair to pin the blame on this little lordling that she did not really know.
And yet…
"He was a man grown!"
"He wanted my title!"
"I am the Lord of house Ailbe!"
"What need have you of that halfborn bastard?!"
She knew that already.
That they had all missed the signs of the change in Walwen's treatment after their departure, of the games played to remove him as a potential threat.
She also knew the funny little name that Walwen had been given by the boy.
That little lord defiled her family with his every step.
He weakened the legacy of her house.
Vain, greedy and spiteful.
Morygen did not remember when she had started walking towards him.
"You have children?" She asked kindly.
"Yes!" He had started stepping back as she neared. "Two by my wife, four by these! The line is secure! Worthy! Pure!"
"What are you?" Morygen asked.
It somehow galled her even more that there was nothing more to the man.
He was a genuinely small man, with nothing to pardon or redeem him.
Such a man had risen under her auspices protected because he bore her name.
That she would bare no taint for what she was about to do made it worse.
It should feel like a grim duty.
Instead she wrapped a hand around his neck and raised him from the throne he was trying to hide behind.
"Mother," Breacc spoke up, the Knight-Leader of her guard spoke up grimly. "Would you prefer us to execute this filth?"
"No," She shook her head. "I do not think that there would be a lesson if you did it."
"Lesson?" He asked, unperturbed by the desperate clawing of the man that Morygen barely noticed.
"For me, for Galtine too," She said. "That trusting the home we left behind to make due on its own, to make allowances for your own sake, that's a mistake."
The cracking sound echoed through the halls.
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Threadmarks Chapter LXXXIV: Homeward X (Trystane PoV) New
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Chapter LXXXIV: Homeward X (Trystane PoV)
He had been looking forward to returning to the fleet and the Round after four months in Rivers-Concourse and having to play politics with the rulers of the new Republic.
So much that he had forgotten how dull their own meetings could be.
"The fleet will be ready soon," Alten'lo commented as he tapped his throne and projected the fleet sectors over the Round Chamber. "As previously discussed, the Rotary will proceed as follows."
With a sweep of his hands the fleet compositions, assets and dispositions were broken down into segments.
Trystane still found the name a bit lacking.
'Rotary'.
Four months of planning, rituals and recuperation and the best name they had agreed upon was the Rotary?
Legends were not likely to sing praise of the legion's imagination.
It was probably more imaginative than some of the names in the Imperium.
But really, rotary?
"Ten Terran years in each post," Dinada commented, the Master of Onyx leaned forwards on his throne to regard the image as if its very image irritated him. "It will be questionable to our cousins."
The others grimaced at that, the sons of the sixteenth were pleasant company, but they had all poured over the reports of the other eighteen legions (and the one that they were not allowed to discuss), it was not promising to set up that much scrutiny.
"The Authority is creditable excuse, Guildmaster," Fleet-Master Ningishzida said as he leaned forwards onto his tented fingers to observe the display. "Even if maintenance is disregarded, it is hardly an easy thing for a new crew to manage. A few exaggerated truths in the battle records and it becomes more plausible."
"That was not my concern," The master of Onyx let out a breath. "Their arrogance is astonishing, we will be seen as cowards if we are perceived as moving between Expeditionary Fleets so quickly."
"Is that an issue?" Trystane smiled at the roll of the Onyx's amber eyes.
"The issue is that they make the most honor-crazed among our people seem restrained in comparison," Dinada flashed his eight fangs in disgust. "I have no interest in trusting an ally which will deem us expendable in the name of their own glory."
"I acknowledge the possibility," The Primarch spoke up, his colorless eyes regarded the chart with annoyance. "It is why we will endeavor to not rely on them."
"Just smile and pretend it is not an issue," The Legion-Mother laughed from her seat, mourning-tear markings in contrast with her smile. "Let them have their glory and leave them to it if needed."
"I understand, Morygen-Mother, but I wish this to remain on our minds," The Onyx Guildmaster snorted but was otherwise wordless.
Trystane understood his brother's annoyance, Dinada was in many ways the most filial among them after Alten but lacked the elder Astartes's patience for the more conventional attitudes of the other Legiones. He was the most against the Rotary.
"Do not worry brother," Alten'lo smiled. "I do not disagree with your sentiment."
The master of Gold traded nods with the master of Onyx before turning his attention back to the display.
"Gold and Ruby will remain with the main Expeditionary Fleet to form the bulk of our force limitations," He gestured to the thousands of vessels which were already moving towards the central fleet-formation. "Silver, Emerald, Sapphire and Pearl will form the bulk of the rotary forces."
Each of the guilds would serve in one of the regional bases while the main force operated as the principle face and strength of the legion.
"Emerald will hold the Warden-Vigil over Calengwag," Alten'lo nodded to Percivale.
The first station on the Rotary was the Warden-Vigil, which would station the guild as guardians of Calengwag for a decade's time. It would also hold responsibility over the 'heartland' of the newborn Imperium, hunting Void-outbreaks within the Imperium territories and dark spaces. It was also the best time to resupply and try new inductees, allowing a fatigued guild to build its strength in a relatively safe setting while ensuring that the homeworld was safe.
"Silver will hold the first Companion-Vigil," Alten'lo confirmed while pointing towards the empty seat that had been raised where the future Silver Guildmaster would someday seat.
The Companion-Vigil would fill much of the remaining space of the main fleet, providing their force with a fresh guild to throw into the most visible crucibles of the Great Crusade and ensure that the ties to the main legion stayed strong.
Well, that is the idea, Trystane amended.
Four months had only managed to reduce the running to four potential candidates for the position and it would not do for a headless guild to do on its own.
"Tor, you will carry out the Ascending-Vigil while Morien will perform the Descending-Vigil," Alten'lo continued.
Two guilds scattered from mobile muster-points to the various Expeditionary Fleets to the Galactic North and South as needed. North would serve ten years before taking the South while the previous holder would move on to the Warden-Vigil.
"And the Onyx will scatter," Alten'lo concluded.
"Our ships will carry their own rotary as agreed," Dinada grunted.
Alten'lo had only begun of course.
Seeker elements, titan deployments, ship compliments and so many other factors needed to be addressed before arrangements were complete.
It was all a very tiring thing but Trystane understood their importance.
They were setting a precedent and one that would be in place for centuries at least, barring of course that some of the grimmer prophesies of his Primarch held true.
Trystane divided his attention between his minor role in the meeting and thinking about the past few moons.
The Sisters had made things hard, their arrogance had not gone without comment in the territories of Ruby at least. It had come as a relief that Percivale had been left to deal with them, as the quiet master of Emerald was by far the most reserved of their number.
More worrying was the fatigue that he sensed from both the Primarch and the Legion-Mother.
Morygen's mourning markings were demanded by tradition, black lines of paint tracing from her eyes. But there was a lack of vigor to her voice that made her seem old, withered and plainly sad.
The Primarch was little better, Galtine was easier to read than his wife. He simply forgot to put up a pretense of external reactions when his mood was sour and did a poor effort of hiding his impatience to return to the heavens.
He understood it, better than the others perhaps.
His spartan chambers in the halls of the Ruby had felt more like a prison than a home on the few occasions he had been able to sleep and even that had been preferable to what was outside.
It had not been completely awful; his sister's new grandchildren had been warm and even loving. But they were the exception in a sea of painful reminders.
It was tempting to think of Calengwag as home.
But Trystane knew that it wasn't.
Their homeworld was a wellspring and a tomb.
New brothers, new blood for their family.
But also, the resting place of so many kin, kith and wars that it hurt to linger there for longer than necessary.
The crusade is our real home, Trystane sighed. What that says about us is an entirely different affair.
…
So, the forces of the Second Legiones Astartes splintered into four fleets.
Percivale of the Emerald remained on the homeworld of their legion, holding sway over the entirety of the system's defenses in addition to his own fleet forces.
Morien of the Pearl departed southwards aboard the bridge of the Battle-Barge Joy. With him, he took seven thousand Astartes and their accompanying forces, taking the Legates Imperator to be delivered to the Tenth Primarch with them.
Tor Galath of the Sapphire departed north with his flagship Multitude and his six thousand brothers, to his new base in the Hundredth and Seventy Seventh Expeditionary Fleet.
And the Eighty Second Expeditionary once more launched towards its appointed coordinates. Twenty-two thousand Astartes remained with the main fleet, along with the Legio Vexos and a full three million mortal warriors.
Their destination was the predicted location of the Sixth Legion.
Cognomen: Space Wolves.
…
"It is a ridiculous name," He chuckled as he opened a decanter from his private collection and offered it to Alten'lo.
Trystane was unabashed in the furnishing of his apartments on the Avalon.
He kept a comfortable home, walled in stone and wood to resemble a middling country-estate scaled to his physiology.
Which included a comfortable den with a roaring fire that almost seemed real, decorated with wood-over-steel furnishings and leather seats, one of which his brother filled.
"They are worthy of some respect," The bearded Astartes said after sipping from the bottle and handing it to him. "They are relentless warriors and loyal to the emperor."
"Isn't that the basic expectation?" Trystane chuckled as he took a drink of his own. "I do not think that we are meant to relent and be treacherous, except the twentieth."
"We are still supposed to not be aware of their existence," The Terran berated him with some humor in his gruff voice. "And 'Space Wolf' is no more humorous than Luna Wolves."
"They are not prone to void combat and if we accept an extra-planetary definition," He pushed back his silver-gold mane. "Then we must accept that we are the 'Space Dawn Knights', 'Space Luna Wolves' and 'Space Iron Hands'. Even calling them Vlka Fenryka seems a bit too literal if it actually does just mean 'Fenrisians'."
The Terran arched a bushy brow, "You are being a touch literal."
"I am," Trystane admitted with a laugh. "But I am worried."
"Oh, I would not say that you are alone in that," Alten'lo admitted while evaluating the trophy blades the lined the walls.
He could freely admit that he had something of a taste for collecting weaponry. Aeldari blades, makeshift Ork klaws and a wide assortment of xenos and human arms, some of which had been maddeningly difficult to hang-up due to their irregular shapes.
Head taking was not unusual on Calengwag, some areas practiced it as a matter of evidence or in ritual practice.
But… Trystane thought that there was something a touch morbid about collecting the skulls of sapient creatures as decorative furnishings.
It struck an uncomfortable middle ground between disrespectful and needy by his reckoning.
"They seem like they will be difficult," he said more seriously. "The Luna Wolves had their odd touches, but this Rout sounds like an irritatingly grim bunch from the records."
"They have spirits," Alten'lo commented. "I have heard it takes like death."
"Who would want to drink death?" Trystane chuckled. "I would much prefer to drink good-humour, coin and other things I can actually enjoy."
"I am not sure that I understand them, they are a rather private legion," The Golden Guildmaster admitted. "Age is hardly a promise of answers."
"Well that is disappointing," Trystane muttered as he finished what was left of the decanter. "I had thought older people were of a more knowledgeable make."
"Age is relative, are you not a few months my elder?" Alten'lo frowned curiously.
"Less than that!" Trystane waved defensively.
"Terran," The elder said dryly.
"Well, then yes," He laughed. "But in fairness, you look older. Is that not what really matters?"
He emphasized by passing a hand over his clean-shaven face to highlight the contrast between him and the elderly seeming former legion-master.
"By that logic, all of the Sixth would be your elders," He shook his head.
"As long as I get to be youthful one," He laughed.
"Is there not a jibe among mortals regarding desperate attempts by the aging to retain their youth?" He said plainly.
"Precisely!" Trystane smiled while standing up. "Let me get another so we may reminisce about my immaturity."
He enjoyed the company of the senior Astartes, especially his willingness to follow his horrid jests without restraint.
It was one of the things he likes best about being home.
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Threadmarks Chapter LXXXV: Wolves at the Gate I (Gilganeyk PoV) New
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Chapter LXXXV: Wolves at the Gate I (Gilganeyk PoV)
She awoke from her empty sleep with relief.
Even after so long, the sensation of the nothingness beyond still scratched at the edges of her mind.
Long…
It had been two years.
A heartbeat in what had once been the eternal lives of her race.
Years.
"Morai-Heg guide me," She breathed as the final traces of rest left her. "I am using their words."
She pulled the blankets from her and stretched over the frame of her cot. Heavy but smooth, comfortable and worst of all, familiar.
They were not as palatable as the small dwelling that only existed now in her memories, but she had learned to bite her tongue.
She eased herself to the ground of the cell she had inhabited since her capture.
Her dwelling was not so different from the others, divided into sub-chambers and furnished per her request.
The walls had a soft shade of yellow that she had not expected the Mon'keigh to be able to replicate and the floor was soft and caressing beneath her feet.
Temperature, scents and colors, all had been molded to a near-perfect fit for the Aeldari physiology and her captors modified them as suited her.
Gilganeyk thought that it was a rather fitting cage for a prisoner.
She had no other term for her state, she could neither stray too far from her dwelling nor could she leave.
And her captors were far from ambiguous.
The Mon'keigh liked to remind them of the exact terms of their state, projecting throughout their prison the definition of a primitive Mon'keigh condition known as a 'Stockholm Syndrome' and a clarification that their state was owed their own predisposition rather than any affection.
Which begged more inquiry than it sated.
Gilganeyk twitched her finger in annoyance as she walked into her cleansing chamber and activated the water projector.
Warm streams ran along her skin with too much strength for her taste.
She welcomed the irritation from the water pressure, one of the small and petty discomforts retained to prevent herself from becoming complacent.
Sometime later she dressed herself in the unadorned robes identical to the bulk of the wardrobe she still possessed and departed from the welcoming chamber of her cell and out into the Tower.
Gilganeyk had long suspected that her captors were possessed of some alien taste for irony. They took them captive and afforded them kinder accommodation than their barbaric race seemed capable of. They kept them in cells but interlinked them and let them move freely through between.
They had also thought to name the space the Screaming Tower.
The space was a spherical opening as tall as a phantom construct standing and as wide as a middling void vessel. The only 'screaming' was the singing of the multitude of birds that sung as they weaved between lush forests. That and the thundering waterfalls that poured between the tiers of dwellings.
The name could not be more counter-intuitive.
The space was entirely too broad, most of the cells were empty save for some hundred.
Only they still lived of those that had been aboard their fleet.
The others resided in a trove of Soulstones stored in a vault somewhere else in the voidcraft, or so she had been told.
And over a thousand were truly lost, in every fashion worthy of note.
Yet…
The tone was not grim in the Tower.
It was tranquil.
The quiet singing of the strange thing that kept them away from the Sea soothing anxiety and unrest as it roamed on the edge of their minds. Gilganeyk might have bucked at the contact but she knew that many of the others did not.
They instead embraced the realization that they were outside the reach of She-Who-Thirsts within the shell of whatever had eaten their threads. They sang in their chambers, worked at paths they had pushed away in favor of martial pursuits or merely passed the days in idle musings.
It was not to say that the young Seer was alone, some of the others were much the same.
She made her way towards the pavilion where they sat on cushions, eating from simple bowls filled with the soft cream that marked the day of the week as much as anything else.
They greeted her with barely perceptible inclinations of their heads.
Many of them were of the Warlocks that had been aboard the fleet, the path of the bloody-handed allowing them to retain themselves.
But as the only true Seer, they allowed her a place of prominence. Which annoyed her to no small end, a blind Mon'keigh could divine the future more accurately than she with the Skein's disappearance.
"Seer, I am hopeful that you were able rest," The Warlock Idra greeted. He was the eldest among the survivors, having been a child when their Craftworld first migrated from the territory of the empire.
She flicked a suggestion of a smile in gratitude but motioned in negative, "Dreams still elude me."
"As should be expected," A tall female that had held position among the Mariners for longer than Gilganeyk had lived said. "You are to face the soul-riven creature today."
Despite herself, she was unable to completely quell a motion of agitation.
They called the black-armored ones that guarded them soul-riven for the simple fact that they were like empty shells.
The warrior-seers to a one had accounts of their power fleeing them when the creatures had come for them and they knew well the fate of the last of their number which had attempted escape.
"I will say no more than necessary," She insisted.
While they were each and everyone of them questioned once every few 'weeks', she had somehow earned the dubious honor of being called to speak with their captors every seven 'days'.
"Remember to not hold yourself too fervently to that," Idra reprimanded softly. "We will be lost should you perish."
That had managed to earn her ire every week for the past two years, the others had anchored themselves to her in a fashion which she was not convinced was appropriate.
By rights, they should be encouraging her towards defiance in the face of the foe like a proper Scion of Il-Kaithe. Instead, those who refused to submit to the gilding on their cage wished for her to behave as a frightened youth so that they might continue pinning their hopes on a blind Seer.
"I do not intend to," She bowed her head begrudgingly in supplication to her elders.
They were only allowed to speak for a while more before the lights surrounding the gate on the central terrace hummed in a pale light and beckoned her to her usual place of interrogation.
She dutifully took her place on a seat of marble and green jade crowned with violet gemstones and laid her hands on the small stone table as had become her habit.
A cup was already lane before her, ornate if ultimately simple.
Of a greater note was the sweet aroma it filled the air with.
Not long after that, she heard the hatch cycle and pull open to allow for the entry of her interrogator.
It was the large one and the old one again.
While her people were often interrogated by black-armored giants with faces hidden behind grim masks, Gilganeyk always had one of three interrogators.
The most common one was the giant among giants called Caice Pa Gur.
She assumed that he led the black soul-riven or at least was of their organization given his similar warplate and monstrous form.
Her next most common guest was the paradoxically literal and metaphorical dam of the giants, the terrifying Mon'keigh-like thing that seemed so fond of antiquated Aeldari and was entirely too good-humored for her own taste.
Gilganeyk disliked her the most as she seemed to possess a talent for making her speak unwisely.
Last was old one, a patronizing title for the old and hunched Mon'keigh from whom sprouted all manner of strange thorns and horns of gold which made him as monstrous to behold as the others. He resembled some sort of daemon with his crown of horns and the great curving structures that arose from his arms and back. That one named himself Kerukeion.
It was odd that there were two that day.
It made her tense in a most unbecoming matter.
"Seer Gilaneyk," Caice Pa Gur greeted with his irritatingly flawless Aeldari. "I hope that this cycle finds you prospering."
"Yes, may you prosper-like-new-born-star-father," The elder one (she assumed, the soul-riven were difficult to estimate) greeted as he eased himself into a chair with the aid of the giant.
She had not yet determined why so many save Caice Pa Gur spoke in such an antiquated manner. Mon'keigh struggled with her language as a rule but it was rarely due to seeming so out of step with time.
"I wish you wisdom," She greeted them with her customary words, an older greeting that could be as much a malediction as a genuinely well-meaning statement.
"You might wish us knowledge as well," The giant said, somehow communicating the subtext of earnestness through his movements despite his heavy armor.
"Although it can be said that wisdom is never amiss," Kerukeion smiled with his ragged lips, milky eyes twinkling as they starred at her with a sight that she herself did not hold in this place. "But we would be most grateful/indebted, young one-that-sees-what-may-come."
"Just so," Caice Pa Gur smiled so widely to be grotesque. It was a subtle showing but it did not escape her that he was affecting an accent as a game of sorts. "Tales are always welcome."
It almost invariably began in that fashion, they rarely repeated their questions.
"If I know the right ones," She suggested a smile while implying reluctance in her movements. "What would you like this cycle?"
It was a question that saved time, they did not ask what they expected.
Their captors seemed more interested in abstract pieces of lore, poetry, syntax and myth than they were with fleets, objectives and more useful matters.
All that they had ever desired of note were the specifics of the Cradle and how long they had to reach it until the seal became irreparable.
Ten of their years had not seemed to alarm them in the slightest, merely asking for the location.
But after that point the questions had become trivial for purposes that she did not fully grasp much to her annoyance.
"I would like you to tell me of your kindred?" He smiled.
The question surprised her, but she hid it as a matter of course.
"My kindred?" She asked.
"I hear them afar," The old one asked. "Like your own kin/kith/family/allies but of a different taste. You might even speak-uncertainties-that-may-be that they are more rustic-worthless-primitive."
"Our records dub them 'Exodite'," Caice Pa Gur spread his hands in an expansive gesture of admitting ignorance. "But we are outsiders, Seer. We would know more of them."
They wished her to renounce her cousins it seemed.
"I am surprised that you would ask this of me," She said as she lifted a cup gingerly to her lips and sipped the sweetened beverage while it played on the receptors of her mouth.
"We are not brutes," The giant. "It is a simple matter in truth, we wish to understand to what extent they might be treated with."
"Treated?" She repeated the word as a question.
Her mentors might have suggested that she weave a web of suggestion around them. But if Gilganeyk had a gift, it was a simple understanding of when a direct cut is wiser.
"We have treated with you fairly, yes?" He asked politely.
"All that you must do is decide if they can be afforded some measure of mercy," Kerukeion hid his hand between the wide sleeves of his robe. "While it remains our choice."
That raised a question that did not need to be spoken in truth.
"Our own cousins found yours first and already they hunt," Caice Pa Gur regarded her with his grey eyes. "We must make a good showing of course if we are to meet them in good faith."
"We would know if it is necessary to offer them kindness," Kerukeion. "If you will but forgive our rather harsh way of speaking."
"Your cousins?" She asked again. "Other M-other humans?"
"Other Astartes," Caice Pa Gur smiled before letting out a soft, peeling chuckle. "And if you believe us to be barbarous, you might find the very much moire unpleasant."
"It would be good then to know more of these Exodites," The hunchbacked old one nodded. "So that we might spare them the harshest extent if they warrant such a measure."
She considered that for a moment, "And what would I tell you of them?"
"Their tongue for one," Caice Pa Gur leaned forwards. "Very peculiar words to my ears, I am quite hopeful that you might offer us proper insight into their word for 'property' in particular."
It took her a moment to realize she was disappointed that the request was so simple.
She had become a glorified Artisan of Words.
Despite herself, she made a rather childish noise at the request.
She snorted.
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Last edited: Mar 27, 2019
Got two stories: An ASOIAF SI Gaemon (Tvtropes) and a 40K Isekai This Won't End Well (Tvtropes) (Info).
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Threadmarks Chapter LXXXVI: Wolves at the Gate II New
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Sep 13, 2018
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Chapter LXXXVI: Wolves at the Gate II
"You're nervous?" Morygen asked as the Stormbird descended towards the largest of Forty-Seventeen's archipelagoes.
"What gave it away?" I asked as a matter of course.
She scratched her helmet's cheek and tilted her head to communicate a mischievous smile, "Took me long enough to figure them all out, you might get rid of it if I told you."
That was the predictable response.
"I am, as it happens," I admitted.
It did not bother me that I was surrounded by my Dian'Cecht on the transport, our sons were vividly aware that I was imperfect.
Blind worship of their progenitor could bring nothing but ill after all.
"The Lord of the Vlka is unlikely to seek a duel, father," Corvises said while adjusting his cloak, the Terran had as hard a time learning the abomination that was Juvjk as the rest of the legion.
"I think that he fears more for the possibility that we shall have to suffer two and half years of their grim company," Cobair muttered.
"Then we have dramatically different expectations of the Fenrisians," Corvises shrugged.
"Are you not a touch curious brother?" Cobair asked blandly.
The Terran Dian'Cecht Primus smiled thinly, "About what is in them, how can I not be?"
There were layers of secrecy within the legion, not as a matter of rank so much as specialization, an echo of the belief that one should trust their Party to each excel at their task. Every legionary had a respectable understanding of their own blood, but the nature of their cousins generally meant volunteering for a degree of induction into the Dian'Cecht. The purview of the Dian'Cecht meant that they knew things about the blood of other legions that was not especially well-known to the greater Crusade.
"Do try not to ask something that will cause us trouble," Morygen reprimanded gently, not bothering to hide some approval of their curiousity.
"I am not likely to ask for their blood, Mother," Corvises said with mock indignation.
"You missed a few bodily fluids brother," Cobair chuckled.
I enjoyed the interplay between the twin Primuses of the Dian'Cecht, it was why they jointly held position of Sect-Master among the healers and soul-wardens of the legion. Positions marked by the diamonds hanging from their necks and the white trim of their warplate.
"It is not that," I said to my beloved as the two bickered. "He will be one of my more… difficult brothers."
Which was a polite way of saying that I had no way to be certain of how I would be able to deal with Leman Russ.
The wolf lord was pugnacious by all accounts and, unlike Horus, possessed a fairly common ability to somehow reshape most any word into a slight.
Granted, many powerful beings tended to either develop a truly grand ego or a persecution-complex.
He was also far too powerful to provoke or slight if at all avoidable.
To say nothing of the fact that he was dangerously close to a split-personality regarding his beliefs, personality and just about every other facet of the conflict between his true personality and his 'warrior-king' mask.
"These are going to be a trying few years," I sighed.
"It could be worse," Morygen scratched her cheek. "Ferrus Manus sounds even more unpleasant, at least the Sixth are not like to chase us with electrical cords."
I snorted at the mental image that summoned as the Stormbird reared for a landing.
We disembarked onto a rather idyllic beach.
White sands lapped by crystal-clear waters against a beautiful sky of vivid azure and broken clouds.
"This is lovely," Morygen commented over the vox as we our party walked out onto the beach towards the designated meeting point. "Sort of tempted to leave the armor and go swimming."
"We might have time," I chuckled as the four hundred Astartes disembarked from the septet of Stormbirds. "Provided that there are no megafauna seeking to devour us."
"That is obvious," She tapped her Bane-Mask. "I am not especially willing to be killed by a marksman."
I shook my head in quiet amusement as the ten Custodians arrayed themselves in twin rows, marking Fabius and his brothers from the Legates Imperator which were to join my peer.
Apollon Plautus did not have an enviable task by my reckoning, the Custodian had a stern demeanor even by the standard of his kind and was an ascetic by choice.
He was likely in for a few centuries of irritation.
We watched as the barrels were drawn from the vehicles by Muruchan serfs drawn from the ship-clans of the Sect-Masters present. They laid them out in neat rows along the grassy plain that bordered the beach while the skies filled with racing formations of airships.
The bulk of the inhabited settlements were elsewhere on the planet and the region was apparently largely safe, but it did not hurt anyone to be secure when dealing with Aeldari.
Not that we knew enough to be sure how we would be dealing with them.
Exodites were among the most diverse peoples of the Aeldari and hard rules were difficult to apply to them beyond the broadest sense.
I had agreed to this particular meet in no small part to draw out the Exodites and speak with them.
"They would have to be suicidal to show up," Morygen commented over our private channel, reading my mood.
"I know."
"You'd point out that even the little Seer called them arrogant?" She continued.
"Yes," I confirmed.
Whatever else, I took no pleasure in slaughter.
So, it could be said that there were in truth two very different and awkward meetings in my imminent future then.
In revenge, in battle, I could admit that I took pleasure in those.
But I took no pleasure in destruction of noncombatants, even as I engaged in it.
It did not free us from culpability that we lived in such a passively and actively aggressive galaxy, but I took pride in not having extinguished any humans in their entirety as of yet and it was my hope that I might offer some measure of mercy to Xenos.
But that depended on our circumstances.
I was roused from that grim hope by Morygen jabbing my side.
"Stop being gloomy then," She grumbled. "We have another wolf to meet."
I chuckled, "Of course."
Almost as if on cue, new roars added to the thunder in the sky.
Turning towards the sound revealed a tight formation of war machines flying towards us.
Three Stormbirds formed the bulk of the squadron, rounded by smaller escorts accompanying the heavy transports in a fashion reminiscent of lesser beasts following pack-leaders.
Details started becoming clear once they were only a mile or so away from us.
While they appeared a bland grey from a distance, proximity revealed that they were anything but.
Criss-crossing patterns and runic verses engulfed their halls in a fashion that seemed more befitting a heavy inscribed warrior than a painted vehicle. Each of the machines followed a differing pattern, varying in shape, size and order to an end which I assumed could be attributed to superstition, past glories or both.
The only commonality between the constructs was their base color and the red wolf heads stamped on their sides at the core of the patterns.
As the others registered the new arrivals, the Oaths formed into their Parties arrayed in a formation of auspicious greeting and faced towards their approaching cousins.
Without word or indication, the Dian'Cecht formed behind me while Trystane, Alten'lo and Dinada moved forwards to flank Morygen and myself.
"This should be promising," Trystane laughed through the vox from behind his Bane-masked warhelm.
"It is fortunate that we are armed then," Dinada patted the greataxe which was mag-locked to his back.
"If it comes to that," Alten'lo shook his head at the jibes of his brothers.
The remainder of the Round had agreed to make their meeting at a later date, we understood the hostility that the Wolves had cultivated with the other facets of their fleet and that their presence at the meeting might be unwelcomed.
For similar reasons, the retainers had retreated into the Stormbirds by the time that the landing thumps could be heard across the field.
"Those are strange wolves," Morygen whistled as her eyes narrowed to the figures emerging from the ramp.
"I am not certain we have a right to opine, mother," Alten'lo's pauldrons hummed as he shrugged. "Calengwag might seem possessed of similar oddities by their own standards."
"Stop being reasonable!" She reprimanded her eldest child while I observed the creatures which were filing out alongside the Astartes.
I had never actually seen a Fenrisian wolf before.
Massive creatures, heavy headed and thickly coated in corded muscle beneath thick fur.
The degenerated humans were truly fascinating to look upon.
I wondered as I looked into their too-cunning eyes if there might had been some useful bits of their makeup that I might have salvaged for Lupercalia, or if there might have already been bits of them incorporated by my father into the baseline.
"Readings suggest an unusual retrovirus, several hundred generations removed from the baseline genome," Sapphire opined in my helmet as she processed my thought. "They do not seem like they would contain anything of particular value."
"You are neglecting their physiology, sister," Gold pointed out. "They seem to possess marvelous regulatory systems, a hereditary adaptation to an extreme environmental range is worthy of some praise."
The two AI bickered while I tore my gaze from the wolves and towards the Astartes.
It was no great surprise that many of them came without warhelm, I understood the rather lacking sensory suit of the Mk.2 would not be especially welcome to their overly-developed senses.
Their faces were much like their warplate, elaborately decorated with all manner of piercings, tattoos and brands to match their outlandish manes. From mohawks that looked scarcely able to fit in a helmet to rounded rings that stretched the lower lip out in a wide oval to faces so heavily tattooed that I could not at a glance tell what the color of the original skin had been. Bone and leather fetishes hung from their necks, hair and armor in equal portion along with feathers, skin and odder things yet.
Fenris was understood enough and my imprint was intact enough that I could guess at the purposes of much of it, but at that moment I was struck by how wonderful a camouflage it was.
Better to see the barbaric than the monstrous after all.
Intricate tattoos rounding the eyes distracted from the near-uniform gold of their eyes and the tapetum lucidum which was not so strange to the ones Morygen possessed.
Obscene fetishes, ornate beards and filed teeth to distract from the overly pronounced fangs that jutted out of their maws.
Mutilation so heavy that the strangely leathery quality of their skin was not so pronounced.
I wondered if the Space Wolves ever noticed that their façade served more purposes than those that they were aware of.
Even to my other senses, they were odd.
Their breathing was persistent in a manner akin to panting.
Scent patterns indicating the unusual pheromones that gave them their scent.
Finally, I saw him. Coming from the back of the loose ranks as they parted for him.
Predictably, two massive (inasmuch as that word still had value) wolves stalked at his side.
I identified the more assertive one as Freki and the more contemplative one as Geri before turning my eyes towards our mutual brother.
Our eyes locked immediately, even through the lenses of my warhelm.
They were vicious eyes, as perfectly blue as hard ice and yet alive with an aggression that the actual wolves had lacked. But I could see more there than just the anger and the ruthlessness, whether by virtue of knowledge or my own insight, I thought that I could see the dour intellect that he so carefully smothered just waiting beneath the surface.
His face already bore heavy scars despite being otherwise handsome if not to the unnatural degree of Horus. Leman Russ had the face that every hero of any number of primitive warrior cultures might have wished for, beautiful but without softness, scarred without disfigurement, human without offering a hint of human weakness. His face was framed with a long mane of ruddy-golden hair worked with the same braids and fetishes as his warriors but without any of the more ludicrous embellishments which were instead replaced by an unmistakably regal aspect.
It occurred to me that the wolf lord was a good hand's-breadth shorter than Horus had been and was so shorter than myself at just a bit over three and third meters in height with his armor. But whatever was lost in height was more than made up for in bulk to look at his armor, movement and the sound of his lungs relative to his movement. He likely out massed me by a not-inconsequential margin and I severely doubted that it was anything but muscle beneath that grey armor from the manner he carried himself.
Strange really, his sons were as they were due to his blood in their veins, yet the Sixth seemed to lack the visible features of mutation that marked his sons as what was odd in him was buried beneath the image of the barbarian-king. I supposed that very little was allowed to differ from our father's vision of the ideal generals.
Yet he had the same nervous energy as his sons, a pressure to each step as if ready to break out into violence at a moment's notice. The way his hands drifted just a bit too high, as if to reach the titannic frostblade at his back, the Krakenmaw.
It is difficult to explain why I felt the urge to unlatch my helmet to regard the Sixth as he and his mob entered the final meters.
His scent along with of the sea and his sons registered more clearly as I met his gaze more evenly.
I was not sure why, but I caught a moment of hesitation in his stride as I did so. It was so brief that even to my senses it had almost been missed.
When he came to a stop next to the shield captain and a mere two meters from me, there was still silence.
We were starring into each other's eyes, locked in an almost-juvenile fashion to see who broke first.
Neither his sons or my own made to speak as the only sounds on the beach were the idle purr of the tide and the hum of the machine engines.
I felt a touch of annoyance over having been pulled into such a childish contest but something in me bade me to refuse to look away as I starred down at the Sixth Primarch.
Heartbeats gave way to seconds and then minutes.
He issued something akin to growl, lips pulling back over filed teeth as our exchange continued and I realized that my muscles were tensing up as well.
Then he huffed, the growl turning into something like a feral smile.
It seemed that he had finally realized how ridiculous the exchange was, so I returned it.
His huffing turned into a deep rumbling akin to thunder which became a laugh as he refused to break eye-contact.
Then he spit at my feet.
And I joined him in laughing.
I academically understood that it was meant to ward off Maleficarum, which our soulless state could be understood as by the wider interpretation of Fenrisian custom.
He probably had not even meant offense by it.
Counter-point.
My fist rammed into the wolf lord's face hard enough to send him sprawling.
No one spits on my kin.
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Last edited: Feb 16, 2019
Got two stories: An ASOIAF SI Gaemon (Tvtropes) and a 40K Isekai This Won't End Well (Tvtropes) (Info).
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Threadmarks Chapter LXXXVII: Wolves at the Gate III (Galtine & Morygen PoVs) New
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Chapter LXXXVII: Wolves at the Gate III (Galtine & Morygen PoVs)
I came to a couple conclusions in the span of a heartbeat.
The first, it may have been short-sighted to assault the Sixth.
Second, I needed to get things under control.
Third, I wanted to beat respect into my brother.
While he scrambled to his feet (an action which would be done before his fall even properly registered among most present), I drew Calyburne and tossed it to Morygen.
She caught it with a nod of understanding along with my warhelm.
Which was as far as I got before Leman Russ crashed into me with enough force to knock the air out of my lungs and knocking us both into the sand of the beach beneath us.
I managed to push him away and coil up to wait for the next strike.
I idly noted that our sons had drawn weapons and that there was a tension in the gathering that threatened to spill into violence.
Then to my surprise, Russ stopped and passed a gauntlet over his blood-streaked face. His panting was heavy as his icy eyes bore into me for a long moment before reaching back and drawing Krakenmaw.
The chainsword gleamed in the light for a moment before he wordlessly turned and drove the titanic blade into the sand and turned back to regard me again.
His voice was a heavy, guttural thing between the snarl of a beast and a roll of thunder. A thick and likely forced accent managed to make it more feral and laced with a dreadful force as he growled out the words.
"No one comes between us," His lips pulled back over his serrated teeth and fangs, although I could not tell if it was a display of threat or a vicious smile.
"Agreed," I responded, the movement of my mouth making me aware that my own lips had been pulled back as I licked my lips to taste the blood from healing lip-split.
My brother gave a booming laugh as he lowered his center of gravity, stretching out his gauntleted hands as he began to circle, a gesture that I found myself mirroring.
I barely caught his lunge as he launched himself towards me, arms reaching outwards like claws.
I made to dodge out of the way only to discover the feint as Russ pulled his arms back and shifted his momentum towards the knee that came crashing into my breastplate. I was almost knocked back as my warplate cracked and I almost lost my breath again.
Following the principles I had been taught, I wrapped my arms around the leg as it drove into me and pivoted to the left, letting the Wolf Lord's kick swing us around and sending us both sprawling forwards as Russ was thrown against the rushing tide. Water arched upwards as we impacted.
The Wolf Lord wasted no time rolling away and lunging forwards with a strike while I recovered.
I did not quite pull back fast enough to evade the fist grazing my cheek and I felt one of my teeth pull free and my head almost snapped back. Not one to waste an opportunity, Russ followed the strike with an attempt to grab my arm and pull me into a grapple.
A mistake as I ducked the following hand, pulled his arm close behind me and pulled the Primarch of the Sixth Legion into a slam against the water. Russ twisted as he fell and cracked his arm as he twisted to push me back as he fell.
We were back on our feet within the span of milliseconds and breathing hard.
I spit the broken tooth out while Russ adjusted his arm, twisting the limb back into place with the whine of servo-motors.
It occurred to me that it had only been a few seconds since we had begun but that did not seem especially important.
We met eyes again and were charging into each other within a few breaths.
It was a relentless fight.
Every step I took, Russ countered. Every time I thought that I had intercepted one of his strikes, he recovered and turned it to his advantage.
I cracked his nose with a strike even while he drove a fist into my flanks.
He broke two of my fingers while I twisted his wounded arm hard enough to earn a satisfying scream from the motors of his armor as they buckled.
It went on like that until we had both lost anything resembling a proper grip of time, there was only the next move, the exhilaration of matching ourselves equal to equal. It was different from fighting multitudes of lesser foes and it was not the righteousness of destroying the spawn of the void.
The only real way describe it was savage joy, the same joy I had felt the first time I tested myself against that Daemon so many years ago.
All over a bit of spit.
Academically, I still understood that the fight was infantile and pointless, the sort of thing that should have been a shameful lack of judgement and restraint.
We healed as fast as we hurt each other, bones sewing together while muscles and skin wove themselves shut.
Our armor was looking far worse than we were. They looked more like crumpled and dented ruins than like anything that should have been working, the weight grew heavier as Sapphire refocused her primary systems to ward off damage.
"Father will be unhappy," I wheezed as I pinned him and began pulling on his arms while pinning him to the bloody sand with my boot.
Russ grunted and wrapped his feet around my backfoot, sweeping my forwards before I had time to register it and sending us tumbling again as furies of strikes, kicks and gauges.
"Heh," The Sixth smiled to reveal cracked teeth as he locked his arms around my neck. "Why should the Allfather care? He made us to be this way."
"He gave us our armor," I pointed out before ramming my elbow into his plate and knocking the wind from spinning around to strike his face as he was pushed. "I doubt he'd be impressed if this is how we destroy them."
Russ considered that for a moment while adjusting his position again.
"You're not wrong," He laughed.
"Its been known to happen," I joined in his laughter.
The tension drained from the battle as we both boomed in a breathless and lunatic jubilance that could only be born from exhaustion and jubilation.
Then Russ started unlatching his armor while I mirrored him.
…
Morygen detached her helmet and started scratching her head with it.
"Well, I should have seen this coming," She chuckled.
The beach was not looking great.
Craters littered the long beach, water pooling in trenches and carving the sand high in other places.
They were still out there, down to their bodysuits and matted in an impressive amount of blood.
"Anyone else want a drink?" She asked while turning around and resting Calyburne on her shoulder, the longsword looking like a greatsword on her small frame.
The tension had largely drained from the Astartes a time ago, the thunder of the clashing Primarchs, blurs of motion and great spouts of water, sand and blood robbing even them of anything but stunned silence.
She sighed when she got not answer and wrapped her knuckles on Breacc's helmet, drawing the attention of her guard-captain.
"Would you be so kind as to bring your sweet old mother one of the barrels?" Morygen asked with a gentle smile.
"Y-yes, Mother," He responded as he stirred his brothers and ventured to the dozens of barrels that had been (wastefully) stocked between the Stormbirds.
With a yawn, she stuck Calyburne into the ground between the Custodians and sat down to lean against the sword.
She narrowed her eyes to look at the now-distant fight with some humor.
Neither seemed especially willing to surrender the fight but neither seemed willing to go for a killing blow.
So, she was not terribly worried.
"The Emperor, Beloved by All, will be intrigued to hear of this," Fabius spoke up.
"Can I tell him?" She asked. "I want to see if he laughs."
"I am unsurprised that you would say that," The Legates Imperator observed while her son returned and planted a barrel next to her, handing her a drinking horn in the progress.
Thoughtful boy, she thought as she accepted it.
"Thank you, dear," She muttered as she lazily reached up to shatter the lid with a flick of her wrist and filled the horn with the chilled, brown liquid.
It was funny to see the Astartes rouse from their awe as the fragrance filled the air. A tangy scent designed to caress the olfactory senses of Astartes and to quietly beckon them to it as their mouths watered at the taste that the air carried to their tongues.
She smiled as she slid back down to watch the fight, idly tasting her drink as she watched her beloved grab unto Leman Russ's braids and tug the man into the path of his knee.
"There are more barrels if anyone wants to watch the fight properly," She waved lazily with her spare hand.
Her sons did not disappoint her as they began bringing barrels closer to the shoreline, striking them open to get at the spirits within.
"You are welcome to your share as well," She said to the Wolf Lord she heard coming close to her. "We brought enough for more."
The bearded and fanged man growled for a long moment, "You expect us to drink while our Jarl is under threat?"
She cocked a brow at him before switching to Juvjk, hoping her accent was not impenetrable. "They have been at this for hours and there is no sense in trying to stop a scrap between brothers where we hail from, is Fenris different?"
He growled for a long moment before shaking his head, "No. I am called Gunnar Gunnhilt."
"Morygen Ailbe," She nodded her head and offered her horn to the Astartes. "It is no Mjold but it is tolerable."
A gauntlet accepted the horn and he drank deep, a mistake given the spittle and chocking sounds that followed.
"It'll still hit you like a Stormbird," She smiled absent-mindedly as Russ grabbed onto Galtine's braid and pulled him into the path of his fist in the distance. "Not great for drinking deep."
"You have the right of it, Morygen Ailbe," The Wolf Lord admitted while the she registered other Sixth Legionaries beginning to make similar discoveries.
"So, Lord Gunn, Master of Onn." She cracked a toothy smile. "Would you care to place a wager?"
The sun died a few hours later as the meeting devolved into something akin to an ancient army camp, circles of Astartes gathering around fires and sharing horns of the ale that he beloved had dubbed Ost-Bita.
No one had to particularly issue the orders for defenses to be established as the transports descended from orbit and Auxilia units began raising fortifications and defense lines were being drawn around the site. Which had the effect of creating a nice contrast of distant machinery and howling engines to compare against the ongoing thundering of the still-fighting brothers.
Morygen watched from spot on the beach as the Legion lords and guildmasters began trading tales and songs while using their enhances senses to watch their fathers beat the soul out of each other.
It was all a bit impromptu all things considered but Morygen thought that it had worked out rather well.
The only one that was altogether unhappy was Sapphire.
"This is going to take the entirety of the night to repair," She complained from Galtine's Warhelm as the small fleet of modified Servo-Skulls continued their search for shed pieces of warplate and reassembling the shed are armor. As a matter of course, the grey warplate of the Russ had also been salvaged.
"You complain too much sister," Gold laughed from her sword/backrest. "And I am almost certain that you are bragging about the speed of your repairs."
"I am entitled to that at least!" She muttered while Morygen contemplated if it was her fate to be surrounded by quarreling siblings.
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Last edited: Mar 27, 2019
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Threadmarks Chapter LXXXVIII: Wolves at the Gate IV (Trystane & Galtine PoVs) New
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Oct 2, 2018
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Chapter LXXXVIII: Wolves at the Gate IV (Trystane & Galtine PoVs)
Trystane came to a troubling conclusion by the end of following sunrise.
One must either conclude that the Vlka are masterful manipulators of information or that the Imperium is frighteningly gullible.
"And this symbol?" He asked as ran a plated finger along the axe the warrior had handed him.
"The dragon rat," The wolf smiled wryly. "Mean bastards, especially when cornered."
"But what does it mean in this context?" He asked with an evaluating look. "Is the framing and curve meant to represent an assault?"
"Nay," His cousin barked a laugh. "Look with your eyes at the greater pattern. It is a threat to the foe."
"You hit me and I will hit back harder, then?" He bared his teeth in a smile.
"Now you have it," the wolf nodded before pouring ale from his horn down his gullet, staining his corded beard. "It may be that you are not as dense as you look, knight."
Like as not the latter, Trystane mused.
'Barbarian' can be an odd word, more informative of the user than the subject.
His father had told him that the High Gothic Barbarayi was a fusion of less than flattering terms which generally meant that the subject was somehow wild and incapable of proper speech.
One would have to be truly blind to apply the term the Vlka.
Trystane had yet to see something 'wild' with regards to the Vlka. On the contrary, the warriors he had spoken with were showing a fixation on symbolism and artistry that would make the most traditional Leanan priest seem austere.
Although it greatly amuses Trystane that the Sixth seemed more than arrogant enough to refer to others as barbarians in meaning if not in word.
He traded a few more words with the warrior before excusing himself and promising to recall the name Bjurni.
Which led to him being intercepted on his way to the next fire by a rather heavyset wolf.
"Are your kind always so curious?" He asked with a casual amusement as he offered a horn.
Trystane accepted the cup while evaluating the man.
The skull-topped staff in one hand, the patterns along his armor and the slight recoiling he could read in the man's face.
Librarian, he concluded lazily as he recalled his lessons. Well, a librarian before there was a librarius.
"Seekers are a curious sort," He replied before sipping the ale. "We like learning things."
"Some might that such thinking is dangerous," The psyker observed while indicating him to an unoccupied fire.
"'Dangerous' is a relative term," Trystane chided him as he followed and took a seat on one of the crates.
"'Danger' means danger," The psyker waved. "It is not 'relative'."
Gothi, that's what they name their psykers.
"I would beg to differ," Trystane offered with a shrug. "But we need not be of a mind on everything, cousin-by-blood."
The wolf shook his head while taking his seat across from him and resting his staff on his shoulder.
"Say that I humored your view," he grunted. "I would say that we have made an uneven trade of gifts. Your legion seems to have learned much more of the Vlka than we have of you."
"Only because you have not asked," The Ruby Guildmaster offered with another smile. "I had just assumed that we were too drab to warrant your interest."
That made the priest smile, lips pulling back over filed teeth and fangs.
"We have an interest, the other two did not greet our lord with a blow."
"And I am certain that he did not spit at their feet," Trystane pointed out.
"If you like," the wolf shrugged, eyes glancing to the continued water spouts and echoing crashing emanating from the shore. "Were we another legion, we might not have taken so kindly to what some would call a slight."
He decided not to raise the point that it may have come to just that had their primarch not interceded.
"Were you another legion," Trystane grinned. "The same can be said for us."
Except Dinada like as not, but you do not need to hear that.
The Blackest of his brothers was never one to suffer indignation after all. Black was a guardian color, those that followed it pushed against the 'other' by their very nature.
It occurred to Trystane with some amusement that the Onyx might find much in common with the Vlka in that fashion.
"But you are not and we are not, nor are you of one mind," The Gothi's smile thinned.
Well, that's surprising. Outsiders did not often catch on to that one. "Oh?"
Now it was the priest that shrugged. "I could not help but notice that those most inclined to ask after us were your red ones."
He punctuated the observation by indicating the red trim of Trystane's warplate.
"Is that so?" He blinked. "That is most curious indeed."
"Am I to assume you will not answer?"
"No, no," He swept his arms to his sides and broadened his smile. "In all our time together, the Sixteenth never asked about that. It is curious that you would ask."
"And your answer?" The priest repeated patiently.
"It might be some stratagem," He speculated idly. "Mayhaps it is a coincidence?"
"Possibly," the wolf allowed. "Is it?"
"Stars no, it is because we are ruby," The laugh was a roar as he downed his horn. "The Red Logic is a searching one but an honest one."
"And I assume that this 'red logic' is an ideological framework?" The wolf deduced with a dry look, dispersing with the heavy-handed attempt at an accent.
"Yes, the color logic of my guild," He explained with exaggerated embarrassment. It was not entirely an act, his own expectation had been some confrontational question regarding their absence from the void or something of the kin.
All thing considered, it was an innocent and even welcomed question. A secret only by virtue of a lack of inquisitiveness. Even Ezekyle had never lent the significance of a guild much more than that of an adopted nomenclature.
That it was asked by a man that had only just berated him for an excess of curiosity also amused him to no end.
"And your colour makes you curious?" The priest pressed.
Trystane's smile became teasing, "Something like that."
Red was the logic of forward momentum and seeking answers, it was the colour of the Vanguard and of the explorer. Like all other Colours, it had its risks of course. It was also the colour of the reckless and the foolish.
The Logics were both new and ancient to Hollow. In most cases they were merely a crystallization of the distinct customs and ethos long held dear by each of the Guilds, a formalization undertaken to restore credibility to the guilds as they moved past their more mercenary character in the eyes of many. Their growing popularity has also been born out of the need to reinforce the kinship between the Mortal and Immortal components of the Guild, a common ground to ease the constantly growing divide before it became insurmountable.
All of which he was about to explain to the likely unprepared priest.
We have a few days, he mused. I wonder how long before he gets tired?
…
I was aware that we had been fighting for quite some time.
One only needed to glance at the decreasing visibility and the rising tides to know that.
Then their reversal.
And another reversal following that.
And another.
And another.
And another yet.
Days… we had been fighting for days.
He's a tough bastard.
The exertion had me breathing heavy, fatigue running like a rarely seen acquaintance to my frame.
My limbs were sore, my breathing was ragged and my hearts were thumbing in my ears.
Constant intermittent healing interrupted by new wounds and trauma had drained my body enough that I was ravenously hungry.
It was all a very indirect way of admitting that I was not faring well.
There was some consolation though.
Russ was looking just as bad as he charged towards me.
His gait had lost much of its power and the irregular fluctuation of his breathing beneath his suit suggested that he would not long outlast me when I finally toppled over.
Ducking under his blow was to be expected, as was his turning the failed blow into grapple which then saw us swerving against a rocky outcrop which buckled under the impact.
I ducked a breath in as the cold, wet stone crashed against my back the same way a mortal would register crashing into a wall.
Pain was a useful evolutionary mechanism, essential for self-preservation.
That did not mean that I was above cursing our father for not including a way to turn off that particular function as I pulled myself to my feet again.
Russ was unsurprisingly doing the same.
"You can give up at any time," I spit a gobble of blood as my body repaired itself.
"What's the matter?" Russ asked mockingly. "Are you late for something? That little woman calling her dog back?"
I felt my anger prickle but stifled it behind a gruff laugh. "If you think she cares that much about this, you are as unobservant as I had feared."
We could both see Morygen in our Periphery, sleeping lazily on two piled sets of enormous armor. Our sons still divided between reveries and spectating.
"Unobservant?" Russ spit and smiled to show a man filled with half-grown and now perfectly-shaped dentistry. "You are not very creative in your slights."
He charged again and I braced myself for another lunge.
But this time the Wolf Lord dove early, anchoring his hands into the sand beneath the waves and bringing his legs around to deliver a vicious kick to my side.
I growled in pain as my upper arm was crushed against my ribs with a sickly crack. Yet I was able to roll with the kick to loop my uninjured arm around his outstretched thigh and bring my weight down on him as I fell.
"You are one to speak on creativity!" I roared, my words half drowned as we toppled into six feet of water with enough for to momentarily drive back the waves.
Our lungs had long since proven that considerations for drowning were relatively inconsequential to our fight. We had spent the better half of the previous day beneath well-past twice my height.
Which had taught me to my chagrin that Russ was by far the superior swimmer.
So I held tight to his leg as we rolled beneath the waves, trying to pin the man.
Far from uncontested, Russ continued to prove himself irritatingly flexible.
He pressed himself down and twisted to with grit teeth as he dislocated his own leg to gain the movement needed to send a fist to my throat. Evading the blow forced me to relinquish my grip.
Russ waisted no time pushing his hip back into place but I took the opportunity to grip him and thrust him against one of the tall stones of the beach, shattering the stone beneath his weight and bringing broken stone raining down on us through the water.
We were swimming towards the shore while taking swipes at each other through the water until we could pull ourselves free from the waves and resume our footing.
The battle continued in that pattern as it had for day after day.
Kicks, punches, grappling, each run through a series of fighting styles adopted and discarded as we still tried to find some means to achieve a finishing blow only to fail.
By the end of it my limbs barely retaining the strength to raise themselves and my breathing bordering on wheezing. The corners of my vision had begun to blur and each breath felt like it was casting fire onto my breathing.
Russ was a mirror in every fashion, filled teeth long since torn away and replaced by perfect teeth and fresh fangs, fetishes torn from his mane and chunks of hair missing.
My own hair was likely a mirror given the ragged mess that had taken the place of my favored braid.
"You do not have much left," Russ said with a strained smile, his footing uncertain as we continued to circle each other again. "No shame in that."
"Speak for yourself," I shot back while cursing the discomfort that trailed each step. Every time the weight came down, I felt as if I would topple with it.
We were blustering really, I academically knew that the winner would be a matter of luck and outlasting the other rather than anything to do with actual skill.
Still.
I want to beat that prick.
Russ probably knew all of that and shared my sentiment.
We were circling each other because we both understood that a single half-hearted blow would have either of us unconscious.
I idly considered what to do.
Scenarios played through my mind as I evaluated my exhausted brother.
Eventually I concluded that the most logical thing to do was the redirect his next blow and plant him in the ground.
That'll work, now I just need to-
The idea was interrupted my losing my foot and tripping forwards as the world grew blurrier.
I heard a distant thud as I crashed.
Russ being on the ground barely registered as sleep took me.
"This is not a damned draw," I muttered as I finally rested.
"By Morkai… it…is…" I barely made out the answer as the other voice faded to unconsciousness.
We never did agree over the resolution of the fight one way or the other.
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Last edited: Mar 27, 2019
Got two stories: An ASOIAF SI Gaemon (Tvtropes) and a 40K Isekai This Won't End Well (Tvtropes) (Info).
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Threadmarks Chapter LXXXIX: Wolves at the Gate V (Segurad & Gilganeyk PoVs) New
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Oct 6, 2018
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Spoiler: Suggested Accompaniment to Part One
Chapter LXXXIX: Wolves at the Gate V (Segurad & Gilganeyk PoVs)
Racing across the battlefield had been a grisly affair, running through fields of smoking corpses, ruined vehicles and shattered debris towards the cyclopean wall at the other end of the field.
Metaphor could be clumsy thing. It was a fickle thing that could explain away its flaws behind accusations of ignorance, a reaching thing that could be contrived into any desirable shape.
But it was difficult to not draw a comparison between the ash that rained around them and snowfall over a stormy night.
Ruined stone ground beneath their feet as they charged through the crumbling stone of the once seven meters of alien wall, kicking up more dust to join the blinding fog.
'Alien' was a deliberate choice, not Xenos.
The Aeldari had contrived to make their walls from living stone, coached to grow and mend even as they rushed in the wake of shield bearing parties. The stone grew with groans with a vicious persistence that required extreme methods to keep at bay.
The thunder of impacts still resounded against the remaining fortifications, landing an epic pounding orchestra from the bombardment that was still ongoing. Precise shells, streams of plasma and even gravity distorting impacts carved and ground the stone to nothing even as it tried to grow shut.
The effect was a constant pouring of fine ground debris and stone.
It was the most literal thing to compare the debris to heavy snowfall amidst a storm.
There was little time to appreciate it to such an extent however.
Much more pressing was to race past the wall before it could weave itself shut.
Past the already webbing and closing stone was a vast courtyard, a killing field between walls.
They wove through a rain of red streams of sizzling energy and stars of monofilament to huddle behind the wall of shields erected by the breachers.
"We are not dead!" Someone laughed over the channel. "Rejoice brothers! We can add not having been eaten by walls to our honor rolls!"
That received a chorus of strained laughter as the last of the tactical parties made it to their appointed places. Blinks selecting and assigning targets from the warriors firing from their fortifications.
It was at an odds with the dire tone of the Oathsong, a dark and powerful thing that was well-matched with grimness of the scene.
"Release!" The Knight-Raider roared over the vox.
The sign was all he needed as he signaled his brothers to fire their weapons.
Lightning screamed free from their weapons as the forty Volkite Calivers of the tactical parties fired into the defenders. Stone, mail, leather and flesh alike ripped apart by the screaming arcs of energy.
Xenos died in swaths, many toppled as their flesh cooked while others were shattered like glass struck with a hammer, adding ash to the constant snowfall.
"Unfurl!" The Knight roared over the vox as the lines broke into racing parties, running across falling debris, leaping over bodies and jutting stone with ease before the foe could recover.
He reached for the charge hanging from belt and tossed it forwards, one among dozens that erupted like stars amidst the falling rock and cracking fissures into the walls.
Lines of half breacher, half tactical, parties intermeshing into hardpoints to continue raining havoc through the ash so as to distract the foe.
Providing the opening needed for the forward formations to climb the walls, using mending fissures as rails.
They caught and leapt, meters at a time while he caught the first glances at the battle raging above.
Assault parties were breaking throw the upper shells and engaging in a bloody melee above, many times deadlier than theirs as they matched blades through raining boulders.
He could not pay his brothers much mind as he leapt over the last few meters and onto the lower rampart.
He could into his landing before lunging forwards, blasts of volkite energy discharging to consume railing Xenos before they could register his presence.
His brothers were already completing their progression as he barreled into one of the Aeldari.
Through the rain of ash, he was finally close enough to observe the foe.
The thing was encased in was seemed like scaled mail which might have been a vibrant blue or green before the ash had rendered it colorless. The helmet was as akin to the visage of the snarling saurians that now littered the field beyond the vast fortress.
Any further attention was sacrificed to survival as it lunged forwards with a long-headed spear of brilliant obsidian.
He threw his weight away from the strike and curved back as he drew his bolt pistol and discharged it into the alien's midsection. Its speed worked against it as its momentum saw its spine take the blow which might have struck its guts otherwise.
The creature toppled but he did not have time to breath before two more blows came from its fellows while more engaged with his brothers in a chaotic and half-blind melee.
It had to be said that the Xenos fought hard, stubborn and ferocious in a manner which was difficult to see as anything other than admirable.
They fell however, and the rampart was secured within minutes.
The breacher parties oriented themselves towards the next wall while the others prepared to continue.
He was glad to take the opportunity to even his breathing.
One of his party wrapped his pauldron good-naturedly as they prepared to advance.
"Well, we are all still alive," The other breathed, Niamh was a good second in his ability to carry good cheer. "Good start to the day."
"Do not curse it," He said out of habit. It was always worthwhile to know one's flaws and he knew himself to be superstitious.
"You always worry," The second snorted out of habit. "We have barely lost a dozen brothers, and none from ours."
"Not for lack of their trying," He observed.
"You are entirely too grim, Knight-Leader," Niamh opined while checking his weapon.
"Not grim," He snorted. "You know I am just Black."
And they were Silver, not the best match really.
"Yes, yes," Niamh clicked his tongue while looking over the far wall where the eruption of Melta charges heralded the final death of the first living wall. "So, do you think we'll win?"
It was not a question referring to the current objective. The Exodites were fighting well but five Raids had been committed to the fortress's downfall, the battle prediction would never have favored the Aeldari.
No, his second was referring to the wager forged between the Dawn Knights and Vlka Fenryka after their fathers had recovered from their meeting.
The Xenos had retreated into several holdfasts akin to the one they currently stormed.
It was a simple wager of who would take their half faster.
He liked that, it gave something enjoyable to their grim duty.
That all being said.
"They outnumber us," He sighed as the outer wall collapsed and the congested smoke and ash finally began to thin. "I would wager some Takes on their success."
"Ever the optimist, Segur," Niamh said. "I like our chances."
"The wolves are mad," Segurad pointed out.
"But are they more mad," Niamh asked.
"Hmm… I have no idea," He conceded. "But I still favor their odds."
"Oh, I do so look forward to collecting on that one," The second clicked his tongue. "Can we throw in a few marriages?"
"That is just unkind," Segurad grunted at the confident statement.
It was one thing to gamble one's earnings, one's Takes. But to offer clan marriages was just overconfident.
Granted Niamh had an excess of overconfident Red in him, so it was not to be taken harshly.
The blast echoed behind them and they turned to advance into the next layer.
…
The citadel had been akin to a cone of grey, psychically-active stone.
She watched as layer after layer was shed away by bombardment, infestation and then collapse. The creativity of the flaying was disturbing in a way, strikes testing for weakness while seeping in through cracks and ripping down the entire structure through slight changes and applications of pressure.
Her guest compared it to dueling among her kind. Subverting the opponent's strength towards one's own ends.
"You are killing them," It was not a question.
"By your words-of-wisdom," The other agreed.
Her eyes slid to the female.
Her visitations had taught her an unspoken fact about the 'Morygen'.
She was a thing of flux.
The scar-patterning that was her hide was always different in some way, the muscles and features changing ever so slightly.
It was a good way for Gilganeyk to remind herself that her guest was less Mon'keigh than her more monstrous brood.
"'Wisdom,'" she corrected evenly.
"Ah," Her smiles had also changed, proper to an outburst on an Aeldari which made it more unnerving. "Yes. 'Wisdom'. You told us that they were unlikely to be amiable."
"And I was told that you would still speak with them," There was something grimly befitting about a failed seer damning a world with careless words.
"And we spoke-like-gentle-breezes," The alien matriarch twitched her fingers in sorrow. "And they met us with words-offered-before-Khaine."
She widened her eyes at that in an outburst of shock.
'Morygen' twitched a brow and arched her lip bombastically, "Do not act so awoken-rudely-to-light, did your fleet not do such a thing?"
"I would not compare their place with ours," Gilganeyk said thinly. "Did you follow the steps?"
She had in her own way attempted to save the lives of her kin, providing the measures needed for a palatable presentation.
"We spoke the words, followed the patterns," The Morygen leaned back on the chair to glance back at the fall behind them. "We still offer gratitude for your words."
She resisted the urge to make an irritated sound at the idiocy of the fools.
The steps she had presented followed the ways of making threat obvious. The Exodites should have seen the danger.
"And now you will destroy them?" She asked.
"After some perceptions of the word," The Morygen conceded. "We will destroy some, feed their selves to their world, yes?"
Gilganeyk wondered how they knew such things, but it was pointless to dwell on it.
The Mon'keigh that had imprisoned her in golden fetters followed a logic that she doubted even their own breed could comprehend.
"And once enough of them fall?" She ventured despite herself.
"We are capturing the ones that tend the spirit," she shrugged. "We will speak with them soon, try once more the speak-like-gentle-breezes."
She idly wondered what they intended to actually offer to the Exodites.
"You will not speak the question?" Her guest asked. "Fine, fine. I am impatient. Offer them enclaves, small and secret."
She waited for the inevitable response quietly.
Such a thing was easier said than done after all.
"Oh, I will not tell you of that," She put a finger against her lip. One of the books they had given her explained that was meant to signal a secret. "Maybe after? We shall see what awaits in the horizon-where-parallels-may-intersect."
Gilganeyk still struggled to make sense of the women's speech. The Mon'keigh spoke like some poet of the distant past whenever she did not resort to the translator on her collar. That her collar provided such a casual method of speech only made the disconnect more jarring.
"Will I be allowed to speak with them?" She ventured carefully.
"Should they prove amiable, the possibility flickers but may yet be nurtured by flames of hope." It tilted its head. "We might even make a trip of it."
Had some of the others been present, they might have accepted begrudgingly while plotting an escape.
Gilganeyk knew better than to think such a possibility was not already predicted. "If it can be arranged."
"Pleasing," The female flicked her fingers approvingly. "Now, would you like to place a wager on the competition?"
Once, she would have recoiled at the very possibility of such a macabre game as the one that had been explained to her.
Maybe it was simple boredom, but she sighed.
"I will wager on behalf of the other fleet," she retracted a finger thoughtfully.
"...It is unpleasant that all weigh so," Her guest protested before smiling. "But it does make the victory all of the sweeter."
Gilganeyk considered the words for a moment before remembering what the Matriarch had said earlier.
Subverting strength under the illusion of engaging it.
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Oct 8, 2018
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Chapter XC: Wolves at the Gate VI (Fear Gorta & Segurad PoVs)
The prey was slow.
Yet curiously divergent from humans.
Faster, less rigid.
Closer to the kin of her kith.
Faster hearts and impulses colored how she perceived them.
They were looked like imprecisely measured fires, flickering wildly as they flowed from place to place.
They sounded like a chorus of hummingbirds being pressed while they tried to flutter away.
Their smell was that of fatigue, adrenaline-analogues, desperation and anger.
But their tastes were the most fascinating, there was a sourness to it that hinted at their origins.
It might make the hunt different, more exciting.
Although retrieval hunts were always enjoyable.
Her latest prey made a sound like screaming as she moved across the ruined fortress, her elongated and splayed feet caressing lightly against the churned mud or tapping against ruined stone or twirling over dead flesh and steel.
The sound elicited something like anger, forcing her to retune her senses to a less sensitive spectrum.
It had not been a reaction to her.
The prey was a wielder of the void and its link to the wall before them seemed to be damaging it even as it pushed it to mend itself.
It was pulling harder than its predecessors, bleeding its life-force at a likely unsustainable pace.
Her observation was complete as the blade raced out to end the first of those minding the wall section as her run became vertical, pale metal twisting and contorting softly mid-strike to fit the beginning of the pattern. A single suggestion of light as the tip of her finger tapped the crystal of the visor, sliding through and severing the brain stem in the span of an infinitude of a heartbeat.
The retraction was as precise a beam, repeated again and again as she proceeded her climb.
The prey was screaming louder as she cleared the final hundred meters of the tiered layers of wall before her target.
She took the span of its words to end one of its protectors before reaching the prey.
It made no sound as she passed her finger along the lines of the plate and split the component materials beneath quietly. They were too fragile to warrant the full strength of her weapon-hands.
The designated prey saw her in time for the finger to pierce the brain as the first death several hundred meters below finally collapsed, finishing the arc as the blade broke through rear of the prey's helmet.
A borrowing strike which twisted softly as it penetrated, cleaving through bone and flesh as she disengaged herself from the motion and twisted to release the cannister against the wall and deactivated the grav-field. The slug emerged and broke into the wall before the remaining targets could register the development.
They were dead in the span of three heartbeats.
Sister, the voice caressed against her mind through the series of webbing that grew through the folds of her brain meat. How fairs your hunt?
The Envoy had an unappealing propensity towards rolling his words, a habit that had only worsened since he became 'Caice'.
The response was affirmative of course, a series of thoughts and images to indicate her progress.
A strike like the blow from Kith of considerable skill, M20/7 Oracle-Pattern Sniper Rifle. Proven by the round being pushed out from the wall.
The support of the wall killed as the marks of penetration already grew in the wall.
Easy prey was unobservant by nature.
No mind to be paid to the way that fractures collapsed the shards or which pieces of the brain had been destroyed.
To the way that the expansion and drainage was insufficient to sever the void-residue that comprised the 'soul'.
To the likelihood that it would not disentangle until three hours had elapsed.
Important details.
Moving, she added as an afterthought. It had slipped unbidden before she could stop it, a sign of her eagerness to move onto the next task.
It was uncomfortable to stay still too long; her body was not made for boredom that came from lacking an objective.
Patience sister-sweet, her named-brother soothed. Your next hunt begins soon.
An impulse of begrudging acceptance clipped her rebuttal.
The Ruby did not make them to be 'patient', She made them to hunt.
Yes, the Envoy purred. Sending you the data.
No sooner did the memories fill her than she was running again.
Another target to kill as the first chunks of wall came crashing down onto the next layer of wall, pushing through and gouging the fortress with the shards of its dying kin.
Kith were competent at least, even if clumsy by the standards of her kin.
She danced through the shadows cast by the dying wall as she veered towards the predicted breach closest to her new prey. There was never long to pass the scars before they mended themselves while the void-touched still remained functional.
The spare minute before such a breach could occur allowed her the joy of analyze the knitting and healing structure.
They were intriguing things that made the fortresses difficult beasts to fell. The walls were proof to penetration through conventional means while they were yet invigorated, immune to the waste of orbital weaponry unless one wished to kill the supporting landmass according to the preliminary hunts of the Sixth-Kith.
Most effective was to kill the thing that empowered each wall with the will beneath it. That crippled the beast, allowing the walls to be taken by bombardment and her trailing kith.
Her tuned senses told her that the force was three to four layers behind her.
Her kith were slow, but they were likely making good progress.
Better than contesting the will of the void with the cold-scented power that the Sixth-Kith used to make gaping opening in the wall.
A crawling and unstoppable Devil-Wurm to the venom that was the way of her mother's Lord and his get.
Her sight-mechanisms adjusted to recoil at the comparison.
Comparisons.
She made a mental note to swipe at the Envoy in punishment for his fondness for reading poetry.
He would make her unfocused.
Unable to gain a proper name from her mother.
An infuriating possibility.
The appearance of a suitable gap allowed her to file her anger away and moved to cross the already-knitting threshold.
The shadowed thing vanished minutes after it had entered the threshold, long before the Aeldari had processed the end of another World-Singer.
…
Each layer was a shift in the enemy morale.
One layer would be peculiarly depressed by the felling of their witch.
Another was frothing in desperate ferocity.
One and then the other, it repeated like well-maintained clockwork.
The final layer was breached as the sun faded and the dust-chocked sky darkened to a grey shroud that made it difficult to appreciate finally fighting under open skies again.
The heart of the fortress was different from the tiered shell that had defined every single one of the eighteen layers.
Organic ridges rose and curved up in a towering shape from which spread several illuminated struts that had clung to the last (and now largely destroyed) wall. It was no wider than a Stormbird in any given direction, but it rose so high as to strain even his warhelm's capacities.
From its based came long loosely-triangular shapes that dipped and curved to rise, once having formed dying wall.
Segurad resisted the urge to grunt as another metaphor came to his mind.
"Well that settles, it!" Niamh chuckled over the vox. "We have forcibly opened a flower."
"Focus on the task at hand," Segurad muttered as his party trailed behind the interlinking forward lines of the Breachers as the five raids gathered in a loose encirclement of the small core.
"Bristle," The Sect-Master spoke over the vox, slacking the space and bidding the Raids to pull closer into advancing sphere-like phalanxes.
Segurad welcomed the command.
The Aeldari-Xenos were begetters of the Goat and it was often wise to adopt the precepts that bid.
Expecting treachery behind the strangeness of its mane was the simplest of those.
Or put more simply, there was a good chance that there was danger to the delicate core.
"Volley," The command echoed as the forward artillery and heavy parties issued a thundering cry that impacted the spire with a ripple so potent that even the Astartes had to anchor their weight in the ash and ruin to avoid being upheaved with the ash and debris.
"Surprise, surprise," Niamh said while Segurad shook his helm to shake the machine spirit to clear the lenses.
He need only look to see that the spire still stood, undamaged.
And no sign of some irregular field.
"Tough," He observed.
"Understatement, Knight-Leader," One of his Seekers muttered as he ran a hand through his visor out of habit, adding some Affara-Maithi curse upon the maker of the structure.
There was no need for a follow-up command after the Raids had recovered their now dusty dignity and to move forwards at an accelerated pace.
Aeldari, again like the goat, were not overly fond of shaping anything to resolve a problem in multiple fashion.
What some might call perfectionist, Segurad considered incredulously simplistic.
The structure was nearly-impossible to mark, it followed that it could be invaded.
A theory confirmed as the xenos poured forwards from the many gates of the structure, there would be no reason to march out to meet them if it was difficult to gain entry.
Or at least, that had been his initial conclusion.
Yet…
"They are not sprinting?" Niamh asked in wonderment as the Raids ground to a standstill, blades and bolts arrayed to match a potential attack. "I know that we look slow and all, but this is silly."
Not for the first time, Segurad groaned at the buffoonery of the Gancean Seeker and his ability to drain the tension of the moment.
It was true however, the xenos were advancing and…
They were unarmed.
"Well if that isn't inconvenient," Maithi Kari spit.
"Do not give up hope yet!" Niamh objected. "This might be some elaborate suicide attempt."
"Party Dorylaeum," The Sect-Master sighed after a few heartbeats. "Bladed bait."
Segurad resisted the urge to sigh as he blinked affirmative and mag-locked his Volkite Caliver, his brothers following a moment later.
"I blame Niamh," Maithi Kari opined as the layers before them split like a sea of bronze and cinnabar, allowing them to advance.
'Bladed Bait.'
The closest measure to a diplomatic party offered to a foe approaching unarmed.
Tactical Astartes, weapons stored so as to present a harmless face.
A dangerous task given the nature of xenos.
Behind them the Raid reshaped even as the other Raids made good time in joining the mass, ranks shifting and moving so as to obscure the movements beneath the surface.
The Sect-Master and his party would soon take a place behind them, preparing to lunge forwards and retract the bait should the foe prove false.
It allowed the bait a small consolation that they might be saved if possible, avenged if not.
They stopped four full-stride from the Raid as the enemy closed in.
Segurad glanced at the Aeldari.
They were unexpectedly bedraggled, fine robes and armor rustled and debris stained over figures that were hinting at hunched shoulders.
It was difficult to feel an excess of pity for the beings that were so-nearly human.
So near as to make the differences too distracting to focus on pity or hatred for them.
Limbs too long, frames too slight and awkward shapes to the bones and muscle beneath.
The figure at their head actually brought a rare trace of humor to Segurad.
It was male if he recalled the briefs of the Dian'Cecht properly, pale and strangely coloured in the signs he knew indicated advanced age. That he lay more on the staff than he seemed to care for was another indicator of infirmity or age.
His humor stemmed from the short cut of his mane to the right and long flowing tresses on the left.
He wears the style of a Europan noblewoman, the extra touch of humanity could be nothing if not humorous.
He stopped two sword-spans from Segurad.
His vox emitter crackled as the Sect-Master spoke through him.
Words came in thundering Aeldari.
Segurad regretted that he was not fluent in the tongue as the elder hesitated at the words.
It spoke in a voice prone to vacillation, croaking one moment, keening the next.
The closest hope he had to tracing the flow of the discussion was the faces of the Xenos and the familiar tones of the Sect-Master.
Where he struggled with language, Segurad was a fair hand at the minute changes of expression and body language.
Tension, desperation and even anger was the default of the Xenos. Aeldari seemed given to speaking with their hands, although in a more muted method than humans.
Questions, ripples of surprise.
He waited patiently while the exchange happened. Ready to draw his sword as did his brother Seekers.
There was a reason why the bait was called 'bladed' after all.
After a moment the elder pulled back his lips and waved a hand wide-fingered, spilling a string of angry sounds before releasing a wail and ripping a neckless from his thin throat.
A flower hung from it, a thing of stone which glowed with an inner light that seemed on the edge of failure from the flickering.
Which he threw at the feet of Segurad with something that was likely a curse.
"Inconvenient," Kari let out an explosive breath.
"I see a few hundred," Niamh said cheerfully. "Do we have enough cots?"
Segurad merely closed his eyes and resisted smile despite himself.
It was likely not the point.
But he suspected that he would win his bet against his second.
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Chapter XCI: Wolves at the Gate VII
There were few things as fulfilling as a challenge.
That pseudo-barbaric nose-breaking self-aggrandizing hypocrite aside, it was a fine thing for my sons to have something pleasant added to the grim necessity of war.
Or at least those were my feelings on the matter, I understood better than most that a fondness for war and battle was bred into Astartes.
As for myself, I dearly looked forward to their beating Russ's efforts despite their disadvantages.
But in that condition, I found my own challenge.
It was delicate work, like most medical procedures were in truth. Keeping the flesh alive and in relatively fine condition while coaching it into fulfilling new parameters. Even with a reasonable knowledge base and some distinctly unappetizing specialist 'assistance', it was a no easy task.
But I was good at it.
Great in fact.
There was little pride in that admission, I was after all as much a tool as my brothers. It would self-felicitating for a tool to take pride in performing within expected levels of effectiveness.
What sort of scalpel takes pride in being sharp?
But that did not mean that there was no joy or fulfillment in the statement.
I was made to be one of the finest molders of flesh that the species had ever seen, and I thought that I might even stand a chance of ranking in the top ten million medical-experts in galactic history.
But no amount of expertise could completely counter a tight time table and limited knowledge.
All a very elaborate way of saying that I found my particular project pleasant on a number of levels.
Begin phase seven, I sent the neural pulse from my seat before the reinforced testing chamber.
The project was not as difficult as one might initially assume with the basic premise. We had more than enough of an understanding of the baseline structures to work out the conversion on a purely biological level. In the grand scheme of life, the baselines were amusingly similar.
It had been obvious from the outset that a viral agent would be best for a large-scale distribution. Aside from the Aeldari's genetic resilience and crippling, more conventional methods would never meet the deadlines in our projections.
Several strains of viral bacteria crafted to feed on certain structures in the body and induce the desired changes before falling into dormancy.
Granted, in the natural world such things had limits that could not hope to achieve what we did now. Even with all of our knowledge and my own programmed genius, the agent was more akin to an invasive ecosystem than a single entity.
The subject began to shift aggressively, and I repressed a frustrated sigh.
Eighteen subjects of the past eighty were still illustrating a much more severe discomfort at the earliest stages. It was nowhere near fatal nor even particularly detrimental to the transition, but it was an imperfection that I would have liked to take the time to resolve.
His anxiety is not helpful, all other levels are holding. Sapphire whispered in my head, while passing biometric data into my brain. None of us was especially partial to using the direct inputs that lined my spinal column and skull, but it could not be helped for more delicate analysis.
Granted, that the subject was unhappy could be deduced quite easily.
The Aeldari male was strapped to an apparatus which regrettably resembled a cross, arms splayed to his sides as he struggled in discomfort against the restraints. Injectors and observation uplinks obscured much of his skin beneath a sea of wires and hoses while drones cut and stitched as needed.
In retrospect, I might have underestimated the discomfort that might result from the pose given how he pulled and screamed a litany of insults as best he could through the feeding tubes running into his mouth.
Well, sometimes you have to compromise, I admitted. Inject strains 7-Nu through 28-Nu.
The Aeldari's head darted to the vents above him as the next round of aerosol poured into the room in a muddy haze. Teeth pulled back in defiance as he struggled with the restraints again.
Using unwilling subjects was arguably unethical, but it really could not be helped. The Aeldari adrenaline-analogue was rather fidgety around infections so it needed to be accounted for.
I watched as the first symptoms began to show themselves. The Aeldari's pale epidermis began to flush, slow and then violently reddening as his breathing became hastened.
I had modeled the initial response on the same principles as a human fever, prompting the body to trigger an immune response in self-defense.
More severe of course, my goal was to force the body to both destroy as much as possible with heat and to prompt its immune system to overproduce itself.
Nutrient-infused water began to pump through feeding tubes as the subject began to thrash harder and sucking on the tubes in a desperate attempt to drink faster. In an uncontrolled environment the subject would of course just seek to quench their first rather desperately, but I was not especially worried about that.
Parasitic cells would couple and meld with the immune response producers and start creating a fast-acting infection in the subject's bone marrow even while distorting the newly-released defensive cells. The altered entities would rapidly begin to attack and destroy as many of the native cells as it could find, opening the way for the new cells being produced at an astonishing rate by other newly-compromised cell producers. The body's functions were essentially being used to cleanse and reconstitute itself through the intermediary that was the invasive ecosystem.
The rounds proceeded as each new step brought another change, doing in moments what natural body functions would take years to do and would do even faster were I not deliberately slowing the process to seek abnormalities.
The changes grew from the lowest level to greater and more noticeable effects.
Tissues, organs, muscles and then bones.
Parasites forcing structures to change themselves and become new warriors in a miniscule war against itself, as if a population coached to rebel against itself. The strains did not die or even fully assimilate as they completed their purposes, mutating into predesignated and largely benign organisms largely indistinguishable from known inhabitants of 'acceptable' physiology. These would proliferate over the course of growth and maturation, forcing occasional changes to 'snap' the template back into compliance as needed to the extreme of raising fertility and inducing critical organ failure after certain stages.
I watched as hives and rashes of differing breeds broke out over the skin, swelling and spreading until the subject was a shifting mass long-since passed out of conscious and into deep sleep. Beneath the wriggling sea of medical equipment and bursting tissue, the subject beneath shifted as I deployed the final layer of agents to complete the transformation.
In an odd way, it served as the perfect parallel to the shifts that were undergoing within the remolding skull of the subject. It would be disingenuous to say that I had not found the field of memory-transference and manipulation via biological input especially enthralling. The subject's memories would be recast in the same way as their flesh, shifting into something much more… 'primitive' if one chose to adopt the horribly outmoded and inaccurate terms that an Aeldari physician would use.
Eventually, the rate of bursting accelerated as the pus-like substance grew thicker and more substantial as it filtered out the excess material engulfed in my own personal flair. A soup of altered liquids that served as a potent if somewhat lemony disinfectant solution.
The skin beneath was thicker than what had been there before, darker in complexion and with a thicker flush.
As the last of the layers peeled back, there was nothing more than the subject on the table.
None the worse for wear other than being a touch wet.
The breathing was regular, and the pulse sounded stable.
For a human anyway.
Another success, Sapphire quipped. Although I remain uncertain whether this will be deemed more merciful.
Their World-Singers agreed, the ones who learned to talk at any rate, I could not, and I would not resort to something so crass as betraying my creator.
A few Aeldari on a ship? Sanctioned. My long term plans? Sanctioned.
Allowing defeat? Surrendering a world to those who would ignore the Void? Intolerable.
So, I cut the middle ground.
They were not human of course, I had never tried to convert one species to another and it did not interest me in the slightest to try.
One could not just tear a patient apart and make a new one.
One could not exterminate every fauna and flora they encountered.
Medicine and its more advanced incarnations were about learning to shape and mold what was already there.
I instead used the Aeldari physiology to affect a transfiguration.
A few healer brains and my own efforts from the bodies I had disassembled with my students had taught me enough about the subjects and my father had taught me the skills necessary to do it.
They were in every single way and shape human.
Except for the fact that they were not human. They were an organism molded to resemble a human in all respects that one might know to look for, layers of failsafe and deliberate mistakes to lend credulity to genetic drift but compliant.
I did not deny that there was something attractive to undermining the Old Ones design, subverting their correcting tinkering with a legion of organisms that did effected a change that would pass from host to host from generation to generation.
They would believe themselves human, preset and hazy memories of a life of slavery beneath Xenos overlords, suitably sympathetic figures for the Crusade to adopt and to fight for it in turn.
The only ones that would retain their memories were the World Singers, they alone would pass on the truth of what they were, shepherding the souls of the dead to feed the world and let it grow stronger.
They would survive and flourish under the Imperium and serve it in turn.
It did not surprise me that they agreed to that particular bargain, they had used the pillars of their World Soul to anchor their Flower Walls and had in doing so made them a target. A target which the Vlka were already destroying through psychic might.
Anything was better than what might befall them if they continued fighting.
Do you think that it is ready? I thought.
Do you mean to be rhetorical? Sapphire asked impatiently. She knew that I only asked as a matter of habit, it had been ready four rounds of trial ago and she knew that I thought it ready.
The plan was to lace the distribution agent into blank shots scattered among barrages in the remaining continents, it was already far too late for the populations slotted to the Vlka and the World Singers of many clans had refused the pleas of their surrendered brethren.
More would die due to the eighty-five percent success rate calibrated into the infection, doing otherwise would make the cover less credible.
Many more Exodites would die before the world was fully in Compliance.
Still, three million living Aeldari were better than none and their Infinity Circuit-Analogue would survive.
All in all, there was much to be pleased with.
Except for a single peculiarity.
"Why do they keep going bald?" I asked out lout as I surveyed the sleeping and now very much hairless subject. For some reason, the transformation kept destroying every hair particle in a subject.
I doubt even the more stringent factions will find that a major flaw, Sapphire opined.
"True," I admitted while scratching my beard. "But I refuse to allow Morygen any ground to pursue her notion."
I somehow doubted that my brother would greatly appreciate renaming the planet 'Horusia'.
More so once he meets the inhabitants.
I sighed.
Sometimes you have to accept 'good enough'.
And hope that your brother completely misunderstands the jest.
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Oct 20, 2018
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Chapter XCII: Wolves at the Gate VIII
"I confess, you are managing to be more troublesome than Ferrus."
Malcador seemed unhappy with my report.
"Really?" I raised a brow. "I would have expected you to complain more of Russ."
"Leman understands what he is more than most of you will. Ferrus is perpetually unhappy with his existence." The Sigilite moved High Astropath's lips into a frown.
"I would argue that the wolf is more irritating," I snorted. "The pretentiousness of the motif, his maddening inconsistency and his face."
"You are close to managing to distract me," Malcador conceded.
"And failing?" I asked.
"Not entirely, I fully intend to ask your creator if he intended for you two to be so conflictive. I am certain that we never discussed it."
"I maintain that it is largely his fault," I rebutted.
"Impressively unaware of you," Kerukeion's crowned head bobbed.
"It is largely denial," I smiled thinly.
"So it would seem. Now as to your request."
There it was.
"Again, troublesome." The Sigilite said through his vassal from where the Astropath sat cross-legged atop his dais.
"I doubt that my Creator will object," I pointed out. "He knows what I intend and I doubt that he left you ignorant of it."
"He did not," Malcador mused as he raised a taloned hand to tap at the dias's surface. "Although I am familiar enough with the Aeldari to know that what you propose here might well be seen as a slight rather than a favor."
"Assuming of course that they were to learn of this," I pointed out. "And I have it on good authority that this might even be deemed preferable by the interested parties than throwing a world to the goat."
"By our logic perhaps, but your interest in the Eye of the Goddess aside, this particular instance would not be so problematic were it not for the games I must play to see it done," He laughed dryly.
And there it was.
Malcador had likely formulated a response at the very moment I finished my report and the chances were slim that he did not see the obvious rewards.
What the Sigilite wanted was for me to ask him directly.
I did not really blame the Sigilite given the annoyances my brothers regularly put him through.
The decision would be mine to defend after all.
"The memories will remain alive only in the World-Singers," I began with a sigh. "They alone were infected with the strain that preserved the bulk of their Xenos mental faculties and memories. Passed from generation to generation of psyker."
"So you wish to preserve a shaman caste?" Malcador nodded. "And when the Iterators come?"
"Not shaman," I smiled thinly. "Viziers, no gods or spirits of course. Merely psykers that's at some point began to practice their arts in secret to preserve their people's ways against the invading Xenos."
"How heroic of them," He laughed through his possessed conduit. "And why will they remain on the world?"
"The reason will be twofold," I said. "The first will be their enthusiastic role in the acceptance of the Truth. A pact with a Primarch is already a rather convenient way of circumnavigating protocol."
"You are not mistaken," Kerukeion's smile was stiff. "And do not think that I did not go out of my way to persuade your creator against allowing those liberties. But it might be useful in this circumstance. Your second reason?"
"They will be bound," I smiled. "I know that it is not beyond His abilities to claim them. To question further than that would be to question Him."
"Ah, it is good that you understand the most central law of the Imperial court," The astropath smiled.
"I am not made to be dense," I snorted.
The host quirked a brow, "And yet I am familiar how your arrangement with your mate began."
"Point," I grunted.
The laughter of the host rattled through the various cords that pooled and coupled with the uplink rods that arched from the Astropath's back like some massive metallic shroud.
Questions followed as the Sigilite worked out the finer details of the plan with me.
From a different point of view, it might be befuddling that a Primarch would be going through such lengths for the sake of Xenos.
My reasoning was not complicated at its core.
I did not destroy what I could use.
The Void was innately useless at its core in its corrupted state.
But most everything else could be made useful.
The Aeldari had ruled for longer than humanity had existed.
That meant that there was something to be gained from them.
And unlike the vast majority of Xenos, their flesh was workable enough to be molded into something passably human.
So I had no desire to destroy them.
And on a more practical level, a respect for and perpetuation of a pseudo-Infinity Circuit proved a point to any that might stumble on it.
It proved that I could be reasoned with.
Most Aeldari were like as not to see that as a weakness to be exploited of course.
But I only needed enough to see reason to gain a more 'open' access to their knowledge.
As the Sigilite bade me farewell and released control of my Astropath, Kerukeion released a breath.
"The First Lord is a distressingly weighty guest," The old man chuckled as the uplinks decoupled from the rods of his back and he beckoned his staff to his hand. "I do believe that I will be fatigued for the remainder of the day, my lord."
I smiled at the old man despite knowing that he could not see it.
The humans of the Round were not that different from the changed Aeldari, blunt and loud alterations meant to draw attention away from hidden truths.
Those that saw the crown of horns, the rods racing through his body, curvature of his spine and talons of his hands. They saw gold-varnished augmentations meant to better interface with the Authority and its systems.
That was true to an extent.
But it was only the barest of truths, a distraction from the aurumite and whitesteel that lay below the gold exterior. Augmentations which were only the final components in changes that had seen them remade from the genetic level to suit their roles in my fleet.
The old seer bore the psychic might cast across the galaxy through a tunnel of Authority-Riven thought the same way another might bare an unpleasant bout of illness. It fatigued the old man but only in the barest meanings of the word.
He had after all been wrought to bare even my father's mind for a few moments if needed.
A strength that had come at a cost unfortunately, Kerukeion's mind was a dangerous thing I had been told, tempered and molded so that a lesser and unshielded mind faced oblivion should they try to touch it. A key reason for why he needed an enlarged choir to receive messages despite his ease in penetrating even the Authority to send messages himself.
Or to consume them in the purifying roar of the Authority.
No, it was really a mistake worry oneself too much for his health.
"Rest well, High Astropath," I waved as I left the old weapon to his meditations.
"My sympathies, lord," The old psyker chuckled as he lowered himself from the dais.
I stopped and turned to regard the astropath.
"For your lost bet," He smiled while regarding me with milky eyes. "Although I do believe that we won our own victory in a way."
"We have yet to lose," I snorted. "Civilians must count for something."
"If you believe so, my lord," He rasped.
…
"They do not count," The Primarch of the Sixth legion muttered across from me.
"Yes they do," I said with a strained smile.
It was remarkable how effective Leman Russ was at undermining my patience.
"Our agreement was to hold contest over speed," The Sixth pointed out. "Not the rescue of mortals. Which had somehow been hidden from us."
"Yet they are a factor," I insisted. To say nothing of the R&D time I spent getting the agents ready when I could have been fighting alongside my sons.
"I did not say that they weren't," The Lord of the Russ shrugged while letting his accent thicken. "But it does not make our contest different. Our father would say that rescuing the mortals is it's own reward."
"Careful," I snorted. "Some might think that you value glory over lives."
"They already think it," His half-smile showed fangs. "It happens when you give a barbarian a legion."
I forced a sigh and rubbed my eyes for effect. "I cannot tell if you are being self-congratulatory or merely stubborn."
"A bit of both," Russ smiled as he poured more wine into my cup. "It is my win. Just going by records prior to the discovery of the mortals. Close thing though."
"Well, not all of us have witches at our disposal," I grunted while taking a sip.
I surprised myself by being so sore about the technical loss. Russ to all intents seemed to believe my reports and accepted the native population without a second glance. Compared to that victory, I had little reason to complain.
"Gothi," Russ corrected idly.
"My wife would point out that by either name they still project lightning from their fingers," I grumbled.
The wolf king growled there, a wet sound that made me to shove a disinfectant agent into his mouth. Then he laughed in a booming voice.
"And I do not have even a little bit of the things you have," His smile grew cunning. "Do not think me without eyes to see brother. I am a thinker and I think that trails of living smoke and warriors that destroy witchcraft are handy to have about."
"Did you piece that together yourself or did Malcador tell you?" I asked while putting on a thin smile.
"Bit of both," Russ conceded while tapping the side of his head. "He did not give this here to us to need that many hints though."
"No, but he clearly put too much of the theatrical into all of us," I snorted.
"Better for the sagas," My brother pointed out. "You've not had the pleasure but Ferrus Manus is a brick. Man's got the poetry of a drunk kraken when it comes down to it."
"And we still have sixteen left to find," I nodded while taking the opportunity to refill our glasses. Seventeen if my hunch is wrong. "Plenty of opportunity for a less poetic brother to join us."
"Something to look forward to," Russ raised his glass lazily in a mock toast.
I was still unsure how to feel about my second brother. One moment, we were idly bandying insults and threats while the next we spoke with a disturbingly easy air.
It was almost a sort of brotherly petulance that one might see in children.
That I sensed little change in the future did not reassure me of improvement there.
"I look forward to someone elevating our company somewhat," I smiled. "I fear that Horus might be mistaken for the only one to pass for a sane man."
"Some might think you are insulting him," Russ purred. "Comparing gods to mortal men."
"Whoever thinks we are gods has a woefully limited imagination," I snorted.
The Sixth paused at that, "I have been called many things, 'unimaginative' is not one of them. Especially from such a melancholic bastard."
"And I have never seen a man so unsatisfied with infinite wealth and glory that he must also claim divinity," I showed teeth. "And we are all bastards unless our maker wed himself."
"Not claiming a thing," Russ showed his fangs with his own smile. "And do not use words like 'infinite' when accusing me of grandeur."
"Hyperbole is a family trait," I growled.
"It must be sad for you when you cannot relieve yourself of guilt by blaming kin," He growled back.
The goblet broke against his face at the same moment that he flipped the table on me.
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Chapter XCIII: Wolves at the Gate IX
"Its tight," Morygen said between rapid breaths, sweat dripping down her forehead.
"We are mostly finished," I sighed as I pushed deeper in. "I told you that it was far too wide."
"And I said that I can take-!" Her growl was interrupted as I thrust again, morphing into a hiss as she sucked in breath.
"I will try to finish quickly," Morygen always was too overconfident about the degree of it that she could take.
The human body was only meant to take so much, although by such a definition she would quite likely be dead.
My beloved had been opened from throat to groin, skin held back by the fine-clawed mechadentrites of the chamber. Her musculature and reinforced bones cut and disassembled to allow me to make my way into her with more efficiency.
Thick adamantium clamps and anchors were held in place by a small swarm of servo-skulls slaved to my neural implants, producing a series of wet squelching and crunching sounds as her posthuman anatomy tried to pry itself free from the outside interference.
She managed a chuckle through the pain as her body was stretched and contorted around the invasive mass. "You are an awful liar."
That earned a snort from me as a I gingerly move my hands through the slowly uncoiling intestines to the cluster of micro-organs which had latched onto her lower spine, careful to position the faintly emerald organ I clutched into the right position. The previous organs had generated outgrowths of connecting tissue around newly formed canals, a protective mucus seeming to outline where the organ would fit with some simple adjustments.
In fairness, she had not been wrong that I was attempting to deceive her.
It could theoretically go faster but I was far too methodical about the matter for urgency to be prioritized, this would fortunately be the last of the organs that needed rotation for that particular session.
There was also the matter that going too quickly might well kill her.
I could outright see how the delicate mesh of which surrounded her heart and overlarge lungs thumping with slight less regimented movement.
The irregularities grew along with her growls as finger mounted las-implements flared to life as set about projecting heat to the alchemical mucus. It was fascinating to watch as the rapidly adjusting heat volumes catalyzed it into a stem cell-like slurry which was quickly re-sculpted so as to obscure the changes which had been wrought within.
It occurred in some distinctly human part of my brain that what I was doing could be categorized as barbaric, perhaps even torturous.
Then again, that voice was also disturbed by the bright cherry colour of her muscles, the rune-etched silver of her bones and the veritable rainbow of hues her organs had assumed.
But that voice was quickly silenced by the comfort of routine.
She groaned in discomfort as I pulled back and blink-triggered the assistant apparatus to push the opening wider, prompting the mechanisms beneath the slab which had attached themselves to her partially-fused rib-cage to move outwards.
One of the problems with my dimensions had always been the need for a wider path of entry, an issue which my beloved's regenerative properties only made more complicated as her body rallied to push harder in its efforts to mend.
I could have used micro-dendrites to manipulate the organ but as paradoxical as it was, my hideously overgrown hands were too deft for me to use a lesser tool for the purpose.
"At the risk of being repetitive," I breathed as her body finally began to settle around the organ, small ticks of finishing adjustments signalling the completion of the fusion. "This would be much easier were you anesthetized."
While there had been quite a few chemical and physical alterations to her body and mind, Morygen seemed entirely too willing to have procedures inflicted on her that stood a good chance of killing an Astartes.
"And miss this?" She grunted between breaths. "You know that I am made of harder than that."
"Very well," I nodded before mentally triggering command which sent a shock through her system, eliciting a howl as she pushed against the restraints that held her in place.
I ignored the discomfort as the entire room homed with a thick-ozone scent, along with the smell of burning meat.
The shock had not technically been electrical in origin, the wild blue-green pulse of energy issues from a the hexagonal pattern that surrounded the suit, discoloring the Aurumite glyphs as cobwebs of nether-light surged into her and making her insides outright shine in a riot of color before fading.
I waited patiently for her to regain her senses for a moment before continuing.
Her consciousness came back with something of a bite, "That slug-riddled piece of-"
She settled into a litany of curses as I resumed the work.
It took another few minutes before she collected herself enough to speak.
"I really hate that part," She breathed.
I shook my head, "You know that it makes it easier for me."
Admittedly, the degree of charge had a reasonable chance of inflicting sensory overload based on past experiences but her modifications made it necessary to trigger the needed reaction.
I allowed myself a smile as the intruding organ released its chemical cocktail into her, signaling that the shock had worked as desired along with the organ's now faintly humming glow.
"You enjoy being inside of me far too much," she laughed at my pleasure as the restraints moved and the slab extended outwards, cords of which had been latched onto her insides filled with a grey colour as the nutrient slurry poured in to match the visible creaking and growing of mass.
"Might I offer an observation?" Stalwart Gold spoke up from Calyburne's stand.
"That privacy is lost on you?" Morygen quipped as her facial muscles twitched. The apparently itchy feel of rapid growth always made her nose itchy for some reason which I had never quite worked out.
"No..." The AI drawled. "Are you aware that your wording is misleadingly suggestive?"
"Suggestive?" I quirked my head as I finished fusing the connecting membranes with one hand while the other reached around the pulled flesh to scratch at her nose.
Morygen chuckled below me after a moment, "Oh! I think I understand."
The mischief in her smile clicked the implication into place and I snorted in distant amusement.
"You suggest innuendo?" I asked while pulled my hand out of Morygen and allowed the surgical clamps to disengage. "That is rather morbid."
It was always a relief to finish, allowing her body to pull itself back together.
I was not overly fond of causing my beloved discomfort.
"I am designed to combat the Voidspawn," The machine mused. "A certain flexibility of thought is helpful."
"I am surrounded by deviants," I sighed as I observed my wife's bones and muscles slid back into place, clacking sounds followed as the ribs snapped back into place and the plates shut with an almost violent force with skin racing back along the surface. Intestines pulled back into place by seemingly their own accord and aided only by long stretches of synthetic muscles, concealing the new transplant in a matter of seconds.
Morygen smiled toothily as the shackles disengaged the moment the moment the last of her skin closed over the scarlet of her muscle.
I supposed that there was a point to the sword-spirit's observation though, there was a degree of intimacy to seeing to Morygen's transfiguration.
Transfiguration.
That was the term that my father had given to the series of surgeries, implants and medical regimes we had begun on her so many years past.
I looked momentarily at the suite around us.
Only a single room of the Avalon had not had the hand of one of the four aspects of Merlin mold it to their liking. Everything in the chamber had been designed and stocked by my creator, arcane inscription ran along walls in aurumite around surgical slabs, workstations and clutches of amniotic tanks cultivating a wild array of organic matter.
To a certain degree, it was quite similar in the generalities to the ascension of an Astartes. The visceral and almost barbaric motifs involved were startlingly similar.
Morygen had undergone dozens of such procedures since our departure from Terra, each building on the initial work I had begun my father. Dozens of alchemically grown organs and implants had been placed in her and then removed when they had served their purpose.
It elicited something akin to fear in me that I did not at all understand a great deal of what I had done to her.
Gene-seed was a thing of paradoxical warp craft in a manner very much akin to how the gene-alteration of Calengwag was a degree of biological mastery which by all rights should be impossible.
Yet those things, even their interactions, were made almost simple by the mold of my mind.
What I was doing to my wife was not something I quite fathomed.
I understood the procedures of course, the research I placed into comprehending each one being part of the lessons my sire likely intended to continue for centuries to come.
But what they did and how they themselves functioned?
It pained me to admit just how many times an organ I thought had yet to serve any purpose would rapidly begin to degrade. How often I found inexplicable alterations in Morygen or more recently, how what she did increasingly failed to resemble what her capabilities should be.
The only parallel was the frustration that came from studying my own body.
To say nothing of the fickleness of the changes, forcing us to go so far as to depart from an active campaign such as the one that raged below to answer the summons of the chamber.
If I had a proper emotional range, the whole affair would have me screaming in frustration.
"You do that every time, you know?" My beloved asked as she set about dressing.
I smiled thinly at her. "I wish I could tell you why, but I am not quite certain myself."
"Oh, it's not a mystery," She returned my smile. "You are wary of what you can't understand, my love. It is part of your Primarch-iness."
"Well, there went the seriousness of the moment," I snorted.
"We all have our gifts, ruining the moment happens to be mine," She stuck out her tongue at me in response as she fastened her belt and left me to finish organizing the chamber. "I am off to see how much readjustment my armour will need this time."
…
"She got taller," Russ grunted as we were admitted into the command structure.
Russ stood over a holo of the battlefield, surrounded by lords from both legions including Alten'lo and Dinada.
"We can't all finish growing in our first half-decade," Morygen snorted, she was making an admirable effort of hiding the fact that the armour's fit had been left a touch too tight by her impatience to resume the siege.
"Hah!" The Wolf-King barked with a bitter smile. "You may have a point there, not that whatever you were doing was worth the delay."
"Given your lack of progress, I do not think our presence would have made much of a difference," It was always a struggle to reign in my temper around my less-than-agreeable brother.
All around us, hundreds of vehicles created a constant rolling thunder as they expelled waved after wave of discharges, rounds and energy streams against the distant mass of the Blood-Iron Rose. Yet what glimpses were to be seen between clouds of smoke and discharge revealed the crimson mass of the last unpacified Aeldari fortress utterly unscathed.
Russ had mustered so many Legion, Auxilia and Mechanicum forces in the twelve camps around the megastructure that the riot of noise would have burst a mortal's eardrums with ease. The problem had apparently grown so severe that the mortals were under orders to keep their helmet seals active and communicate solely through vox.
"You try it then, brother," Russ growled. "My Gothi cannot penetrate the accursed thing."
"I do not question your competence, an observation is not a condemnation, brother," I growled back. It had been a surprise to read in the reports, whatever the Aeldari which had refused me had done to their final holdfast, the wall flatly refused to take even the incremental damage which had previously allowed my Fear Gorta the entry they needed to disable the Worldsingers within.
That presented a problem.
The fortresses of the xenos had not been easy conquests, unless one was naive enough to equate speed with ease.
Past victories had made speed a requisite rather than a feature after all as the only effective way to breach their fortification had relied on fatigue.
While our methods had been different, both legions had relied on the strategy of raining ordnance upon the fortresses, to create windows where fatigue would momentarily slow the regrowth of the walls.
While my own legion had used such opportunities to deploy strike teams and Fear Gorta, the Wolf King had called upon his Gothi to drive their psychic winds through such openings in a method not unlike a directed twister, expanding outwards like a great drill and allowing packs to pour inwards.
Yet days of bombardment had not garnered so much as a scratch on the Rose.
"Aye, you should know better than to question my mind," Russ laughed as he tapped the side of his head with an armoured finger. "As it happens, I have been waiting for you two to finish your lazing about."
"I do not spend much time questioning things which I do not believe exist," I grunted. "But tell me what that pebble you have in your head came up with."
"Have no fear brother," Russ smiled mockingly. "I will even use small words so that you'll understand."
"My lords?" Alten'lo cleared his throat. "Might I suggest that we focus on the matter at hand?"
"I agree with Alten," Morygen smiled as she came to stand beside her eldest son, not seeming to notice that she now reached an inch over him. "You two can compare swords after this is over."
Russ gave her a warning snarl but the let out a breath and waved a hand over the display, widening the field to proper illustrate the battlefield.
The Blood-Iron Rose was something of an exception compared to the other fortresses of the Aeldari on Forty Seventeen.
Where the other fortresses tended to sprout from the rocky mountain ranges that were the norm on the minor continents which were scattered across the island world, seeming shaped from the very stone beneath it, the Blood Iron Rose seemed foreign in make.
Current speculation was that it had been shaped from the original colony ship which brought the Aeldari to the world, given its ruby Wraithbone hull and place across a wide prairie on the world's largest landmass, spreading in a fashion not-dissimilar to a hivespire.
That same line of thought posited that there was a connection between the seeming invulnerability of the fortress and its origin.
"We know well enough that the surface is untenable," Russ grunted. "And the bombardment that we would need to break through it would leave us with the great prize of a broken planet."
It was a good point, a rarity for Russ.
Mild bombardment from orbit had been suggested but models predicted by Kaga'tsuchi had put the required yields in the same magnitude as would be optimal to breach the planetary core. A less than desirable solution given the number of 'humans' on the planet, to say nothing of its marvelously rare and almost unblemished biosphere.
The loss of such a prize to a single fortification despite the presence of the bulk of two legions and half of the known Primarchs? The humiliation of such a feat of incompetence did not need to be stated.
"Then what is your motive for the continued bombardment," Morygen asked as she leaned on the holo table, taking me from my thoughts. "A distraction?"
Russ's lips peeled back to show his filled teeth, "At least you are not dim."
I gave him an annoyed snort, "A distraction to what end?"
"Gothi," Russ tilted his head to one of the Rune Priests which flanked him. A shaggy mass of armour, runes and fetishes which almost completely concealed the face beneath.
"When we saw that our cold could not pierce it, my lord," The old shaman said in a surprisingly reedy voice for an Astartes. "We set about wandering with our minds, to see what else we might divine of this world."
He signaled and the image zoomed out to show the world as a whole, with the Rose outlined in red.
"What we found was of great interest," The red outline extended outward before extending in a great web that arched across the entire world, bursting outwards in the all-to-familiar towers that had been found at the center of each of the flower fortresses. "It is our belief that the Xenos and their witchcraft use this network of crystalline conduits to coordinate, in our spirit dreams we have sensed the very soul of the world tethered to these structures."
It was fortunate that my emotive range was rather limited, it helped repress a scowl.
That was dangerous territory the wolves were walking.
"And I suppose that you aim to destroy it?" I asked with feigned curiosity.
That earned a rippling snarl of amusement from my brother, "And now who is the bloody-minded one, brother? Nay, we mean to do as our namesakes."
"The structure suggests transit, my lord." The priest continued. "Not unlike a den structure one might see in the lair of nobler beasts."
"Aye, and like a pack seeking new territory," Russ's grin was feral. "We will dig into their tunnels and rip out their throats."
I hand it to Leman, the glorified pup was not without some cunning.
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Chapter XCIV: Wolves at the Gate X
829.M30
Much was made of the fundamental inhumanity of Astartes.
One could choose to dress it in reverence or disdain, it made little difference in the end.
They still made similar claims, that their kind had been flensed of most all humanity and refurbished towards the single-minded necessity of war.
Such claims were precisely why I possessed of a special contempt of exaggeration.
It was not that they were entirely mistaken.
There was an undeniable truth to the fact that an Astartes was in many ways not human.
In mind and flesh and whatever other criteria one wished to employ, some alterations could be found by any Astartes with even a passing ability for introspection.
No, it was the exaggeration which I took issue with.
It was true that an Astartes was shaped for war, that years of admittedly grueling pain and conditioning were employed towards that very aim.
An Astartes needed to process emotions differently than a conventional human, to be able to withstand the horrors of continuous war and the many hardships such a prospect promised. To say nothing of the fact that many things dwelled in the stars that conventional means would not sufficiently counteract.
But any who took such truths and made the leap towards inhumanity was a fool.
An Astartes may have an altered experience of emotion, but they were still very much capable of possessing them.
For example.
They could feel a great deal of boredom.
In their assembled ranks, my sons would look to casual inspection like an ideal lf stoic discipline, standing at attention as they prepared to board the lift. The fading sunlight flaring off the bronze and cinnabar of their warplate.
To my eye?
I could taste their mood in the chemical composite of their breath. The thousandth of a movement of fingers barely flicker enough to draw a reaction from their actuators. The way which some glanced side to side.
Well, that and the fact that the vox channel was flooded with their complaining.
"I am going to die of age in this armor," One spoke up.
"It has been six hours," Another retorted.
"Shut up."
I could hardly blame them really.
They were al fidgeting with impatience after a week of waiting to end their time on what seemed like a world of endless and bloody sieges.
It was an odd quirk that I had seemed to pass to my sons somehow.
None of us could tolerate boredom.
It was not to say that there was little patience in the broad spectrum of legion, but whatever gave other warriors the ability to wait on standby without anything to occupy their time seemed wrung out of them by my seed.
Especially when they could literally see their next objective.
Before them was a pit large enough to allow a Stormbird to fly unobstructed into the depths of Forty Seventeen. Several tall lifts had been arrayed around it, waiting to convey them deep into the earth below.
While I was myself very eager to get started, I still had to credit the Red Priests for their work.
The order of Mars produced exceptional siege engineers by any fair measure, but even I had been uncertain that what Russ had proposed could be done.
In less than a single standard Terran week, the Priests had not only isolated the ideal sites for the dig but had also both calculated and executed a truly masterful excavation of Forty Seventeen's depths.
It was impossible to avoid alerting the Xenos of course, the World-Singers remaining to them were more than tied to the world enough to predict and re-allocate defensive measures the tunnels (which did not seem to benefit from the nigh-invulnerability of the Blood-Iron Rose's hull).
But one of Russ's Gothi had suggested a rather novel solution.
It is the way of the Xenos to try and follow every scent of the future, why not let them chase then?
The Sixth might be insufferable, but his sons had a remarkable amount of sense in them when he was busy laying in a drunken stupor or otherwise helpfully disposed.
I glanced around the makeshift valley of machinery and upturned earth, two other vast pits stood to form a triangle before the one which were preparing to descend into.
All had the same prefabricated mass-loaders prepared to descend down ceramite-reinforced pits towards the enormous burrowing engines which awaited to penetrate the Aeldari's crystalline web. By that same token, precisely twenty-seven camps akin to that in which we presently stood had been established, great tunneling mechanisms had been lowered to the world's surface in a great ring around the Blood-Iron Rose.
Eighty-one tunnels had been dug in total by the Mechanicum, each neatly intertwining and unwinding through the earth like coiling eels through water before splitting into sub-tunnels whose terminus nearly touched the skin of the enemy crystal-warrens.
Only one in nine would be delivering a force like the one before me to infiltrate the last stronghold of the Xenos on the planet.
As for the rest?
I glanced at the last of the Melta-Bomb laden crates being loaded by teams of servitors onto the tram.
Well, the Aeldari forces at those points would be in for quite a surprise.
"You seem pleased," Kagu'Tsuchi observed as she approached, her war-form so finely tuned that her tower figure seemed to almost float above the steel of the platform.
The growl of thundering engines forming her voice told me that she did not share my humor.
"I am imagining the result of our assault," Despite my frequent repetition of my needless death, there was a certain appeal to what was about to happen that allowed me a rare smile of genuine mischief.
"Then it will allow at least someone joy," The Arch-Magistrix's face of polished steel contorted into mild disdain, barring teeth of grinding gears. "That the Sixth-Iteration continues to disappoint in his willingness to reject a proper contest of might."
It had become clear to me early into our relationship that the ancient priestess had a love of direct confrontation, while she had masterminded much of the present plan, she would have much preferred to have continued hammering against the final fortress's walls until she had at last contrived a way in which human might would lay low the ancient sinfullness of the Xenotech.
"Do not fear, we have much work to do yet before our claim is secured," I commented with a more sober smile. "I am sure that the next stages will warrant a more direct illustration of the Machine's might."
Were Kagu'Tsuchi a conventional follower of the Machine God's destructive facets, she might have well been contented with the knowledge of her part in the seventy-two melta-strikes which were about to literally shake the core of the planet. Even most other adepts would be quite pleased with the artistry of coordinating the tunnels, blast yields and fault lines so as to avoid producing any undesired consequences beyond a few minor tremors on the surface.
But that was not in the priestess's make. No, her coordination in this affair demanded that her wounded pride at being forced to surrender anything resembling defeat be sated in Xenos blood.
I did not blame her though, Kagu'Tsuchi's unique tendencies were a great part of why I liked her so much. One of the benefits of my eidetic memory was that I could still vividly recall her cleaving through ancient protective barriers to rip apart ancient automata with the quartet of Force Axes that were currently mag-locked to waist.
"Affirmative," Kagu'Tsuchi said with a noncommittal clank of hammers while turning her head to pointedly assess our forces. "The sooner we might commence the operation, the better."
"On that we agree," I effected another smile, following her gaze.
Roughly fifteen assault squads of my sons formed the bulk of the force, supplemented by her own constructs.
While several Skitarii maniples pledged allegiance to her and the fleet, Kagu'Tsuchi preferred to do battle alongside her own personal creations. An assortment of red-stained war robots of a dizzying array of patterns waited unmoving behind my sons, united only in the generally close-ranged armaments and propulsion systems so loved by their mistress.
None of the nine true insertion forces were especially large, being equipped for speed and concentrate.
At present we were only missing a single element.
Incoming contact, Sapphire noted through my cranial implants, only a few moments before my ears registered the still-distant thunder of the Stormbird. Identifying, Nephoros-Pattern Stormbird, Designation: …Well, that is just ridiculous, they call it Hel-Biter.
You must admire their capacity for creativity at least, Gold chuckled.
Putting together two intimidating words does not make one creative, Sapphire retorted.
The beauty of my enhanced mind meant that I was able to ignore the bickering siblings while nodding my head in the direction of the now more audible transport. "It seems the last of our force is due to arrive."
"Two minutes and thirty-eight seconds ahead of schedule, barely tolerable," Kagu'Tsuchi grunted with the revving of motors. "Mullinis might be a rotting waste of access codes, but she is not mistaken in her complaints about the Sixth."
I snorted in agreement, both to the pronouncement with regards to the Sixth and at the derision the Arch-Magistrix showed for her peer in Fortieth Expeditionary Fleet. To my understanding the other Adept was not incompetent so much as hidebound on matters of interpretation with regards to Motive Force. That she was repetitive and vocal in her opposition to Kagu'Tsuchi's own view had not made fast friends of the two. A view I happened to share.
"You can hardly expect one of my brother's get to comprehend timeliness," I said without force.
The grey Stormbird raised up clouds of upturned dirt from the mountains of churned earth as it spun into position and eased itself down on one of the prefabricated landing platforms which had been built around the site.
Its ramp lowered as five figures emerged from it.
My eyes narrowed enough to garner a full image of them despite the distance which they had yet to cross.
At their head was the gothi which had spoken for their number at the meeting a week-past, marked by his heavy grey locks so heavy interlaced with bone fetishes that a conventional mortal would see nothing but ferocious muzzle of his leatherwork wolf-muzzle.
I could look past that to catch the peculiarly tranquil expression on his unlined face.
My brother had a clever streak when it suited him.
Each force would be accompanied by a Rune-Priest to navigate their way through the witchcraft of a Xenos when needed, and a Balor detachment to smash through what mystic-webs the Aeldari would opt to bring against them.
"Lord Ailbe," The strangely reedy-voiced witch greeted with a bow.
"Gothi," I nodded my greeting. "I am afraid that we were not introduced when we last met."
Thin-brows tented, "I am called Mirko Shorn-Thread, Lord. It does me honour that one of your renown would ask."
Was… was that polite deference? Gold asked in surprise. My readings do not detect any irregular Void tremors, yet this cannot possibly be of the sixth.
"Given that we will be relying on you for this venture, it is the least that can be expected," I effected a smile before making introductions to Kagu'Tsuchi, who at least pretended to be interested in the existence of the Astartes.
We wasted no time beginning to embark on the trams, boots and iron-shod mechanisms clanking against the steel of the platform as the Stormbirds and Mass-Transports lifted off in the minute that remained before the ordained time of commencement.
As I settled over the edge of the platform and mag-locked my boots, I felt a smile quirk my lip.
"Knight-Raider," I called over the vox as I clamped on my helmet.
"Yes, Grandmaster?" The warrior of silver asked.
"A question for you," I chuckled as the final seconds ran down. "Have you ever heard a man scream as the floor drops from under him?"
"Wha-AAAAAAAH," My son started to answer as the timer hit zero and the floor launched down beneath him, stretching the word into an instinctual yelp as the laughter of a hundred broke over the vox.
Always good to start a Raid with some cheer, I thought as I added my own adrenaline-spiked laughter as we shot down into the depths of the planet.
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Last edited: Mar 12, 2019
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Mar 14, 2019
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Spoiler: Suggested Accompaniment to Part One
Chapter XCV: Wolves at the Gate XI
829.M30
The lift was moving at a maniac pace, the tunnels passing by so quickly that even my eyes could barely keep pace with the contours of the tunnels.
We could all be grateful for modifications which provided things like a near-immunity to motion sickness, otherwise the rapid spinning, halts and drops of the lift would have most humans voiding their stomachs inside their helmets.
That and the lack of inertia to the stops, thrusts and turns would have long since killed most humans, as opposed to causing some mild discomfort.
Disengagement in 50 seconds, Sapphire chimed over the vox.
"50 seconds," Kagu'Tsuchi vocalized for the benefit of the wolves. I glanced at her platform in time to see her use the momentum of a turn to bring her four primary upper limbs down to maglock to the lift. Over a hundred Astartes used to mark to bring themselves down, one hand and knee maglocking as the lifts began to tip forwards.
Jump packs hummed to life in last minute confirmation burns.
30 seconds, Sapphire commented as I shifted my own weight, nanites pouring under my armor and finalizing their preparations.
"Oath Song," I commanded over the vox, initiating the play of war-cant. Feeling the moment humming in my blood.
The steady thunder of brass and drum blooded the vox as the tunnels began to shake.
Melta-Strike in 5.
I unsheathed Calyburne and coiled down as the last few seconds came down.
"My sons," I roared over the vox. "Come forward, let us break these foes before fangs of the imperium!"
Melta-Strike in 2.
1.
The Oathsong was almost overcome by the sound of seventy-two impacts of tens of thousands of melta bombs striking true.
Words struggle to capture the glory of the strike, a hammer which resonated with the might of an apocalypse focused into a murder-blow. The moment came with an almost startling stillness as the shaking almost seemed to stop as even the most inhuman of minds came to an almost total stop at the shock of the impact before the world came rushing back with a scream of world-breaking madness that ripped the lifts, tunnel and earth below it asunder.
The shaking was so violent that the ceramite buckling of the tunnel gave way in every direction as of the planet itself meant to swallow them in vengeance, the black abyss of the collapsing shaft coming alive with an eye-searing flare before expelling an all-devouring blast of debris and strangling dust..
"We bring the Dawn!" The Astartes roared as one. Hundreds of jump packs roaring to life as maglocks disengaged, launching the raid forwards as fiery screams of apocalypse shot towards them and the platforms were shorn to pieces.
Smoke, ash, fire and falling earth raced past the raid as they weaved through the ash-choked churn like streams of fire piercing through the melting dust and fire.
My hearts pounded against my ears as I fell downwards, trusting to the strength of the archaeotech of my armor and the reflexes beneath to stay alive.
The blare of the Oathsong kept pace as the world narrowed before me, my mind having no thought beyond the next fraction of a heartbeat.
Stone hugged tight against me as I slipped past a boulder the size of a dropship, a burst of force from the nanites in my armor sent my body spinning past a jet of fire, overlaid barriers allowing me to crash through a toppling piece of ceramite.
Yet there was an artistry to the hell, I glanced a sequence of boulders fall together to form a support strut-like pillar as I leap over it.
A newborn river of molten stone crashed against a cloud of dust, cooling it into a plaster for a segment of ceramite ready to buckle under the weight of a pillar which towered hundreds of meters tall.
The violent metamorphosis of the eruption brought a wide smile to my mouth, the sight of my sons and allies weaving through this almost impenetrable sea of fire and dust filling me with an odd joy. I did not fear for my sons nor even for Morygen, who I knew would be passing through a similar trial in Russ's company, why would I?
That was the thing about trust, I knew that the abyssal fall would not fell them.
Maglocking Nanites pulled a fragmented chunk of metal towards me in time to serve as a ramming shield against a stream of earth's blood.
So there was nothing to do but to follow the brilliant masterwork of my brother and the Mechanicum, the primeval violence with which they had not only struck at their foe but the transhuman brilliance which leashed that fury into a transformation which would barely be known to the surface for all of its violence.
Hundreds of supplemental tunnels dug by an army of excavation servitors redirected the violence of the blasts and strategic collapses redirected the force of the blasts like a grand orchestra which blended magnificently with the Oathsong.
My fist crashed into a jagged fang of stone and inch below the tip, fist opening to a grappling hand as I spun away from falling stone and shattering the fang beneath the weight of my hammering boots to launch myself forwards.
The rhythm of the Oathsong seemed to infact be given another chorus by the pattern of the tremoring earth and screaming stone.
A clear pattern in fact.
Canticles to glory wrought from what, under a slightly less masterful hand, would be an apocalypse. I would never be persuaded that it was not Russ's way to teach the Aeldari that he was anything but a simpleton.
I allowed a laugh to echo from my helm as the bottom of the shaft finally began to gain a definition in the light.
We fell through the bottom of the shaft as the last of the tremors reached their last crescendos and fell into the final hums of the last after shakes.
Before us was an expanse which the scale of the Aeldari warrens on the holomap had only represented in abstract.
It was like beholding the corpse of some subterranean serpent of gargantuan size, a great tunnel of crystal bridging a stony abyss which even to my eye stretched into an indecipherable nothingness.
Our work showed in the still crumbling crystal of its flesh, shards the size of warships crackling and falling into oblivion to reveal the glass-like flesh beneath.
My peripheral vision caught sight of the flow of disturbing magma pouring from wounds across the tunnel's stony ceiling, indeed the blast-blacked tone of the walls suggested that quite a bit of the expanse around the warren had been the result of some sort of shielding mechanism attempting to preserve the structure from the blast.
I adjusted the pattern of my freefall as the roars of jump packs clustered closer to me even as the gravity-manipulating archaeotech of my warplate began to rapidly disperse the moment of my fall.
"Reading vitals," Sapphire spoke up in my helm, preferring as usual to issue her own voice than to speak directly to my mind. "We have managed to avoid any causalities beyond three lesser war automata."
"Why, it is almost as if they were designed for such ventures," Her brother commented wryly.
"Almost as if you could engineer luck," Sapphire retorted. "You are living proof that even the finest schematics are not guaranteed to produce a successful result."
"We are alive then!" Gold laughed enthusiastically while I ignored the feuding sibling-constructs.
"Second Iteration," Kagu'Tsuchi greeted over the vox. "A successful venture, acceptable losses."
"As well as could be hoped," I blink rotated my helmet vision to glance at the falling shape of the priestess's war-form, watching as the sphinx-like profile of her outer shell flew downwards on wings of grav-engines and propulsions units. A diving phalanx of war machines forming beneath her. "Knight-Raider."
"Yes, Grandmaster," There was a dry wariness in the Silver officer's voice after my last jest. He did not question the implied order however as the formations of the Parties formed into darts until our freefall became the killing bite of a fanged maw onto the exposed meat of a wounded beast.
We dove past the crystalline outer walls of the superstructure and into the network of scorched bridges, pathways and structures beneath.
Team after team drove into the bridges and ledges, trusting the experience of both Seeker and Astartes to pick the most stable land sites.
By the time of my own descent, my suit's eldritch mechanism made the landing more akin to setting foot on the last step of a staircase than an enormous fall.
The Oathsong receded into a more muted tone, folding into an Astartes ability to be aware of a sound without feeling interference from it.
I looked around with some curiosity as the others regained their bearings.
A fine layer of ash, crystal shattered into sand and fallen earth covered everything.
Once one sorted through that, one could see that the shape of the superstructure was not unlike that of an Aeldari helix. A hilarious feat of arrogance made amusing by the deliberate genetic flaws and unnecessary overcomplication of the species. Temples and ancient buildings of an entirely different style to the surface stood in analogue to components and materials in what I had to admit was a rather attractive interpretation of the subject.
I could also appreciate the symbolism of modeling your World Spirit after literally threading your genetic blueprint into the flesh of the planet.
It was not debatable that this was the World Spirit, from the way which it tied to the obelisk-tower at the heart of every Flower through a vast network of veins and roots to the ferocity with which the Aeldari had protected it.
That and the fact that it was utterly colorless to my eyes beneath the ash and debris, like all Wraithbone.
"They might have been wiser to go with a more abstract vessel," I observed dispassionately as I looked around.
"The entire superstructure is shielded," Gold noticed with amusement. "I had not registered any unusual Void-stuff beforehand, yet I am registering a truly magnificent array now."
"That sounds like praise," Sapphire observed with some amusement.
"Some appreciation for the scale of the deceit Is natural!" Gold chuckled.
While they continued on, I moved forwards to the nearest function of strands while my warriors lepted from point to point, bolters and swords in hand as they moved around the wraith-dark.
The crack of Kagu'Tsuchi landing leaping from across a gap to fall in step with me was the one of the taps of sound that rang in the increasing dark and silence.
I glanced at the Magistrix's warrior body as it uncurled from its flight consideration, wings curling and redistributing around the body and the upper half of the mechanical sphinx rose up and rearranged itself. The image was akin to a skeletal human torso rising from the liquid-like machinery of some great beast's back, gaining flesh and definition in the way of synthetic muscle, organs and armor as she readjusted herself.
"Few traces of obvious mechanisms detected," She echoed with the silent thrum of engine motors as her head of coiling mechadentrites and human-like mask settled into place about her shoulders.
"That is to be expected," I mused as her four newly risen upper arms unlatched her force-axes from her newly-reassembled waist. She still retained the human habit of twirling them in her arms as she walked, testing the balance of each in a curiously human gesture. "The Aledari never do anything with honest machinery what they can infuse with warp-craft."
"You have the truth of it there, Lord," I turned as the Gothi final managed to catch my stride, his guards tailing behind him. "Maleficarum is abound in the very floors of this place."
He spit on the floor as his guards made warding gestures and spit on the floor as they placed their helmets at their waists.
"It is more precise to say that 'maleficarum' is this place. Designate-Mirko," Kagu'Tsuchi corrected.
She was diplomatic enough to ignore their suspicious looks at her, the Mechanicum were strange enough under their robes and Kagu'Tsuchi was less tactful than most.
If one were to cross a gorgon with a sphinx, asura and centaur made of metal, one might begin to fathom her war-form. Her only concession to humanity being the pristine skin under armored plates on parts of her upper body and mask, at odds with the heavy claws and many-fingered apparatus of her habitual body. If one were honest, they would say that her most-human traits were her most unsettling characteristics.
To his credit the Shorn-Thread merely nodded his shaggy head in agreement, "Aye, we will have to proceed with care if we are to slay this beast."
"Then let us focus on the task at hand then," I sighed as we moved down the planet-strand of the Exodite World Spirit.
Comment if you want more feedback sustains me! Your opinions are always welcomed!:lol:
Last edited: Mar 14, 2019
Got two stories: An ASOIAF SI Gaemon (Tvtropes) and a 40K Isekai This Won't End Well (Tvtropes) (Info).
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Threadmarks Chapter XCVI: Wolves at the Gate XII New
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Mar 18, 2019
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Chapter XCVI: Wolves at the Gate XII (Morygen PoV)
829.M30
The wolves were an odd bunch.
Well, the other wolves had been strange in their own way.
But the wolves of Russ were so honest about their quirks that it lent them endearing quality.
Maybe wolves in general are just weird? More academically, it certainly helped distract from their seeming more mutated than an incredibly lucky Seeker.
Humans had a prioritization system to the way their brains went through input. Size came before colors, facial ques and distinctive characteristics. Most mortals saw a Space Marine and they saw the height, the bulk, the abnormalities.
She glanced at one of the Astartes.
Lime-stiffened thorns of hair dominating the scalp while a network of braids leading up to a knot matched with a heavy beard of plaited tails. A mask of blue-inked tattoos and a ring of copper on his brow.
Serving other purposes or not? The average human would not struggle not to have a cushioned reaction to the predator's inhuman eyes, the overgrown fans and the other, smaller hints.
It was funny, a lifetime ago she would have thought such traits things to bragged about. The world is bloody unrecognizable, well, aside from this being a literally different world.
The thought occurred as she hopped across one colourless temple wall to another.
She was steadily less impressed with the odd formatting of the old city. The curving architecture which formed that enormous artistry of it bordered on the absurd.
Long strands of phosphate and sugar were emulated in streams of long-cooled magma suspended by Wrathbone shells, nucleotide tower-cathedrals conjoined in massive spirals of shaped earth merged with wraithbone. Hydrogen-emulating Plazas with floors so thin that they were avoided stepping over them. Gems growing in artificial clusters around habitation-sectors in reference what she supposed were Aeldari colors for Thymine, Adenine and the like.
This could not have been a less convenient to live in, At least her wolf-kin had reasons for their oddity. What sort of reason existed for building a temple at a ninety degree angle was lost on her.
It was not that she was dense enough to miss the symbolism, it was the fact that no society with such a humanoid physiology could have a comfortable existence in that freakish abomination of city-planning. Even if you once had artificial gravity here, why would you willingly deal with this daily?
She filed her annoyance towards the back of her consciousness, it was better to use her excess processing power on something more interesting.
The wolves stalked across the monument to impracticality around her in a funny way, although the invasive clash of aesthetic between them and the city was entertaining in and of itself.
Most kept their helms maglocked, stopping every now and then to sniff and taste the air as they maintained their running pace forwards.
She understood the practicality of it but the hum of their Jump Packs and the quiet but ever-present hum of their armor sort of broke the image of the quiet hunter.
For her part, she was quite happy to hum along with the muted Oathsong in her helmet as she flipped and dived from jutting building to jutting building. Not just for amusement but to build a practical acclimation to the environs for their soon to come battles. Testing the weights and angles against the models her freshly-enhanced mind were incessantly conjuring up.
It was the practical thing to do as the Aeldari would be reacting sooner rather than later, the strikes had doubtlessly killed quite a number of defenders. But the trickiness of Aeldari and the fact that they were already moving as fast as they could combined made oncoming combat a guarantee.
And it is also fun, she added cheerfully as she caught a jutting statues arm and swung forwards like a Coin Blade-Monkey. Just because war is hell doesn't mean you can't try to fit some fun in.
The older she became, the more adamant she was about that. Her life had and would only ever be war and loss, if she did not take moments to imitate an ape while delving through the DNA-Roots of the World Soul of a people on her way to killing them, she would truly go mad.
That and a major intersection registered some three kilometers ahead of the main gathering of the Wolf force and she very much preferred to watch their pointy-death weapons bounce off her Brother-By-Marriage over offering her own skin up first for bruising.
Said moving hill of furs and questionable aesthetic choices was obviously running down the main thoroughfare of the strand edifice, his Ur-Beasts leaping at his sides. Morygen very much doubted that Russ was oblivious to threat, but the fearlessness of his beasts intrigued her.
She liked wolves, she was not as crazed as the Aossi were with them, but it was hard not to have some interest in the heraldic beast of the Silver. Although, the Wolf-Foxes of Hiber'Cale were an entirely different breed than Russ's superb brothers.
That they had survived the fall down the tunnel had impressed her, leading Morygen to assume that the Primarch's Void-stuff characteristics had somehow spread into the 'wolves'. She might not have shared her love's fascination with which greasy bits go where, but she could not envision and evolutionary scenario where the twins made sense. So Primarch-y-ness would explain far more than just the fall as well.
Their seeming lack of a survival instinct for one thing.
But then again, Morygen hardly claimed to be a savant when it came to the Void of Dreams. She just liked to think that she knew its touch when she saw it.
Speaking of the silliness of Primarchs.
"Something amuses you?" Russ turned his head towards her and his voice carrying as if they were not dozens of meters apart.
"A great deal does," She responded mirthfully. Looking him in the eye despite the distance, Tit for tat.
Leman Russ was no more capable of a genuine fear-reaction than either of his brothers (in a world where she registered as a threat), but he was easier to goad. She wondered if it was more the demands of that 'simple warrior' skin he wore, his ego or something entirely different that prompted it.
"One day, you might tell me where you found that face," He commented, not breaking 'eye' contact as he ran ahead. "My gothi don't like it much."
Hoh, he want to catch me wrong-footed. She noticed. Hah! If Eldar architecture can't catch me wrong-footed, nothing can!
Her lips curved up at the question. Almost matching the euphoric White-Steel smile above them.
"I took it," Morygen said easily, as if she were commenting on the lack of weather.
Another difference, she adjusted her mental tally. Horus never asked after it in five years. Certainly never pressed the point.
She liked the Shiny One, but she suspected that a lot of his diplomacy stood from the fact that he was almost offensively disinterested in things that he saw no use for. He did not pry unless he had to.
Russ on the other hand…
"That is not an answer, Pariah," The Sixth grunted.
"Oh, such hurtful words," Morygen dropped from a building, making sure that he could see her put on hand to her chest and another to her brow dramatically before making the landing and continuing on. "Calling a lady such things! What will your mother think?"
"It is fortunate then that I have no mother." The Wolf-king grunted at her.
Morygen laughed, "I will be sure to tell your father's laboratory you said that, she will be quite hurt."
A human, even an Astartes, might have missed the quickly-suppressed snort of the Primarch.
"On a more serious note," She mused while balancing on the outstretched spear of some ancient Aeldari hero, the statue dressed on the skins of the reptiles of the world. "Did Thengir have no wife? Consorts?"
She saw Russ stiffen at the mention of his mortal father. He did not reply to her immediately, looking forwards with a scowl on his tightly-pressed lips.
It was likely an inappropriate question.
Hmm… Galtine never suggested that could be a sore subject, she considered. I'll have to thruddle him over this later. He needs to just up and give me a play by play of his recollections at some point.
Her love's fault or not, she took the prolonged silence as a hint that she had jabbed an old wound.
Morygen was too much of a Seeker at heart, she knew that.
Seekers liked to know the hearts of their fellows, to orientate larger groups with potential failings that the Ruins might use against them. A habit she had only discarded once in her sixty-three years, only to nearly get dissected for her trouble.
But it was ignorant to assume.
Her guardian-sons might see nothing wrong with the banter, but it might have been selfish of her to not consider the discomfort of Russ and his sons around them. It was not as if they were using a private vox channel.
But it was not in Morygen's nature to apologize for that sort of thing.
"You ask questions but do not answer them, lady," A new voice broke in. Deep and growling.
She glanced at the black armored figure among those trailing Leman Russ.
Oh joy, a priest. "I could tell you a great many things, Bony Magic-Or-Metal-But-I'm-Assuming-Magic-Make."
"What?" The priest asked, caught off-balance by the oddity of the nickname.
"She is mocking our patterning of your armor, Leif." Russ muttered. "Although I am surprised the irony escapes her, given her own livery."
"It does not," Ouch, that was actually a valid point, although in fairness the ornate armor she wore had been wrought of the Palace's forges (she would not concede that her Father-By-Marriage had done an impeccable work in following Gwyer aesthetics). "Although I would defend that much of it bares some function or meaning. Much as your own."
"Such as your mask?" The (probable) Rune-Priest recovered.
"I did tell you that I took it," She laughed.
"With respect, lady," The priest rebutted. "It should not be possible to do what I think you did."
Ooo, a clever pup.
"It is if you try hard enough," Morygen laughed. "You know the power of symbols as much as any here."
"And I know that there are limits to those as well," Leif acknowledged. "Some are limits of wisdom. Others are limits of impossibility."
"If you acknowledge impossible as a term immune to circumstance, then everything is impossible." She idly noted that Russ was not speaking.
That made sense, all of her beloved's brothers were psykers and many of them put an amazing deal of effort into repressing the fact. To ask what they were speaking of would be inviting 'unclean' knowledge.
Morygen did not agree with the assessment.
In practice, what she did was only marginally more barbaric than the trophies she had seen his son's so proud of. Or her own people's tendencies to take trophies.
Metal does not wither,
So in it you trust,
White-Metal in word, White-Metal in fact. Take the Skin of your foe.
And that is that.
She smiled at the old devil-rhyme while running over one another statue. It was a curious bit of symbolism that the statues grew more numerous as they progressed, each showing a minutely different state of transition between Aeldari and the giant serpents of the world.
It was a shame that none of the World Singers could have provided her insight into the place.
The exodites of the world had produced an amusingly strong ruling family, one which had more or less monopolized the history of their people under the aegis of their own (soon to be dead) dedicated-Psykers.
Russ had no way of knowing it and Galtine did not care much either way, but Morygen was aware enough that they had provided the World-Singers of the other tribes with the means to secure a regime change.
We are not puppets, she mused. But it is sort of endearing to see how universal opportunism is.
So she would likely never hear the story about the wraithbone statutes that littered the hall.
Or how exactly they were managing to move their heads to follow the intruders.
Eh, we will find out the jist as soon as they attack. Morygen thought while offering one such construct a bow.
Comment if you want more feedback sustains me! Your opinions are always welcomed!:lol:
Last edited: Mar 27, 2019
Got two stories: An ASOIAF SI Gaemon (Tvtropes) and a 40K Isekai This Won't End Well (Tvtropes) (Info).
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Threadmarks Chapter XCVII: Wolves at the Gate XIII New
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Chapter XCVII: Wolves at the Gate XIII
829.M30
You are hardly being subtle, I sardonically chastised the World Spirit as things began.
My sons reacted to my sudden chuckle.
Squads clustered, sword grips shifted to be more easily drawn and bolters drawn while slowing their pace.
They knew as well as any of the Dawn what my good humour meant, as well as the significance of my quickly loosening and tightening grip of Calyburne.
Kagu'Tsuchi's automata responded to some unknown command from their mistress. Blades, axes, claws and more hissed, whirled and clicked as they prepared for imminent use. The Magistrix for her part did not stop her habitual twirling of her axes, although each ignited at a single catch with blue fire before she resumed the pattern.
"You sense danger, Lord?" My Gothi escort asked while following the Priestess's lead by igniting his own sword, his guards reading for bloodshed.
"A great deal of it," The familiar toggle of a genuine smile urged at my lips as I absentmindedly ran my tongue over them.
"How are they doing that?" Gold thought curiously. "I am not detecting any flux."
"You know that it is due to their being part of the over all structure," Sapphire sighed while she overlaid and reworked the targeting runes for the entire raid to more accurately find the incoming threats.
"Of course;" Gold snorted. "But how."
Sapphire sighed while I focused on the supposedly subtle enemy.
I could hear the first of them a click back, moving so quietly as to elude the baseline levels of motion-detection of the armour's autosenses.
The following glances of their closer kin were no more hidden to my eye.
Beautiful constructs of literally living Wraithbone, each a stage a millionth of a stage between a freshly landed Aeldari and one of the glitter serpents which those above seemed so fond of as war-beasts and as the source of their saurian stock.
While a part of my mind was tempted to invoke the thought of the Goat Slaanesh, in the serpentine aesthetic, I quickly discarded the idea.
There was no element of excess to it, in any worthwhile fashion by Aeldari standards at least. The entire circuit had little in the way of artistic flourish to it.
It clung to the format of the Aeldari pattern but there were too many concessions of practicality beneath the grandness for the Goat. The statues were too somber and imperfect in aspect.
No, I could understand the purposes of the wraithbone images.
They were a repetition of the dual symbolism of the World Spirit, both digging their roots into the world like a vast mangrove and becoming the world's blood through a literal interweaving of their DNA and the planet.
The images were a (thankfully) symbolic union between the Aeldari and the apex predators of the world above. Metaphysically claiming that by taming and becoming one with the serpents, they claimed their place at the apex.
It was as thorough a claim to a world as I had ever seen. And so unusually to the point by the standards of the Xenos that it almost seemed antithetical to the Goat.
...That might actually be the point, I thought. Well that and their apparent use as pseudo-Wraiths.
That was the probable description of the machines which were preparing to strike at us, since they lacked any of the perceivable energy-signatures of the other Aeldari technologies we had faced thus far.
I was becoming a bit impatient to try my blade against them, even while a hateful secondary stream of consciousness already resented that they would try to take my sons away from me.
The paradoxes of war, I sighed while I came to a stop, bringing the Raid to a halt around me. Might as well force their hands.
My sons did not need to be told to assume the Blade-Shell, layering blades and bolters in the age-old fashion of Seekers. The unusual double-layering of force around me was irritating but I let it go.
Under normal circumstances, the Legatus Imperator would be arrayed around me, but the noted absence of my 'guardians' seemed to have prompted concern over my safety.
The prices I pay to match Russ's idiotic wagers, He had requested his guards aid in the distractionary assault, and I could hardly differ.
So, I tried to be subtle in angling towards the front.
"Knight-Raider," I said by way of permission for the Silver officer.
"Yes, Grandmaster," The young officer nodded before raising his voice.
"Second-Born! Silver is our Courage and Steadfast is the nature of our Victory!" The war chant echoed from Astartes as the enemy dropped the pretense.
Clacks began to echo as they sped their expanse.
The result of scratching and tapping of feet and slithering flesh rushing forwards, too light and graceful to produce the sound of their full weight.
Constructs poured from behind them in a great grey tide, they ran or slithered in packs over the walls and pathways around them in every direction. Each moving towards one of the bristling Party formations.
They had shaken off the exterior of their skins, ornate scale and artificial blood molting like snake skin to show the dimly-recalled image of true wraiths. Some still wore tails or lacked legs altogether, others had weaponized structures in place of bestial heads.
A horde of chimeric Xenos constructs rushed forwards with roars and hisses emanating from unmoving mouths and gun-jaws. Their scale ranged from forms only slightly larger than an Astartes to towering beasts which were the match of a battle tank.
You had to accredit the alien's sorcerous machines, they would have frightened away any number of mortal formations.
Fortunately, none of us were.
Bolt and Volkite ray launched forward with murderous zeal, arcs of blue and eruptions of thermo-reactive fire consumed the advancing horde. While any number of the constructs exploded into shards of solidified warp-energy or disintegrated under the monstrous heat-burst of Volkite energy which seared away the rune-matrixes that bound them to their necromantic existences. But whatever damage the initial bursts did were quickly obscured as the constructs overran their shattered kin with a violent fervor which I had never expected from the Wraith-kin.
From the gun-like maws of the serpents lanced forward and array of blistering energy streams of grey light which sent my sons away from their formations with practiced discipline, seeking to evade the roar of the probably hell-guns in the most time-honored fashion.
By running into the horde, blades drawn and boltguns roaring their challenge as they crashed into the wraith hosts.
Chainswords carved into wraithbone even as claws and spears of singing Void-stuff dug into ceramite, colored by the rising mayhem of weapon discharges around them.
I was no different than my sons, command belonged to the Knight-Raider as it always should.
My place was among the slaughter.
Barreling ahead of my sons, Calyburne screamed as the White-Metal sword crashed into the articulated architecture of a towering Wraith-Beasts midsection. It dug as I used the anchor a full swing around it, letting the momentum carry my opened hand like a blade into the wrist-joint of a construct in the midst of raising it to strike out at me. In the breadth of the moment, I harnessed the momentum of the strike to pull Calyburne free from the now bisected Wraith plunging it the neck its freshly maimed brother.
My lips pulled wide into a feral grin in the relief of a foe to destroy without guilt.
I forced my way forwards into the wraithbone sea while my sons fought in blade-lines following my wake.
Our allies were far from shaming themselves as well. Kagu'Tsuchi's war machines followed their mistress as they gunned their integrated Jump Packs into a thunder of murderous vector strikes into the far rear of the tide, seeking to convert the battle into an encirclement in the oldest fashion. Enormous war robots crashing into the largest of the constructs with claws and fists of crackling, lightning-wrapped adamantite.
To my mild surprise, the Shorn-Thread and his guards were hot on my trail, the Gothi-guards fighting the beasts with a mixture of scorn and jubilation which, I was mildly disturbed to see, fit well into the sword-lines of my sons.
The priest however, was paradoxically more and less subtle about it. Heavy-maned psyker's sword parried blow after blow with a practiced determination, fading forward and back from the mane line of our blade's edge, until he picked his moment.
He moved into a parried blow of a Dawn Knight, bringing his sabre down in a heavy-handed strike over the Xenos's long claws while my son's blade held them in place. I watched as the witch-fire did not burn but rather froze the wraithbone under them, eating away at the wraithbone until it shattered under the blow, freeing the knight to take the initiative and separate the construct's arm from its shoulder and cut at the softer material inside. Although by then the Runepriest had already moved on to repeat his work elsewhere in the line.
Some amused part of my mind noted that Mirko seemed far more interested in providing others with an opportunity for glory than augmenting his own.
Whatever part of my consciousness was not moving from one kill to another could appreciate that. A good storyteller ensures more opportunities exist for such tales to come about.
Others had moments of glory as the battle continued.
I spotted the distant figure of Kagu'Tsuchi wrestling a great wraithbone serpent to the ground with her leonine lower body while her mechadentrites hooked her into place. The position allowing her to dig into the great wraith-beast with her quartet of psychic weapons.
A Knight-Leader saved a fallen brother from a constricting embrace by firing a volkite pulse with his spare hand while parrying a blade strike with his other. Trading a shattered limb for a brother's life.
The Knight-Raider rallied a spot in the blade-line that verged on buckling by impaling a giant serpent's head on his power sword after jumping upwards with his pack.
But as usual, the joys of battle grew bitter as battle went on and my sons began proving the limits of their luck and skill.
An Astartes underestimated the speed of a strike and a glimmer colorless blade shattered through his eye.
One of the Gothi's guards was ripped open as two serpents carried him deep into the tide gripping each limb and pulling until they succeeded in pulling his limbs free and leaving him helpless as the hateful constructs ripped apart the defenseless wolf. Russ would have to be told that his son's last act before the grey overtook him was to shatter a helmet open with a vicious kick of his boot.
Elsewhere a masterful blast from a dying beast pierced through a son as he sought to bring down the blade, hurling plate and flesh into the Void and catching the head of the brother behind him.
Others were less dramatic, severed hands, disembowelings, deep cuts and heavy blunt trauma appearing on all sides as the battle grinded on.
The nanites poured from my armor as my implants began to warm, a series of mental commands guiding the swarms to stitch together flesh where the wounds were not yet fatal and to accelerate those that their inhuman physiques already beat back.
It was hard fighting, distinct from the brutality, luck or sheer monstrousness of many foes we had faced before.
For all their alien monstrosity, the hoary souls in the wraithbone frames used countless years of experience and the might of their forms to close what gap the enhancements of my sons allowed.
There was a strange cleanliness to the grief of the battle.
Death could not have a point, but some were far more honorable than others. There was a valor to the phantom-host that I could respect even a seething hatred coiled around my hearts.
I repaid the bravery of the dead with the purest form of destruction as the soul-hating metal of Calyburne ripped through them, each broken shell an Aeldari soul destroyed beyond any hope of claim by their spiteful god-progeny.
Yet the hate-haze of my blood did not have time to rise by the time the tide began to diminish, the wraith formations breaking under the weight of our numbers.
Then something unexpected happened.
A wraith surged forward and crashed the blade of a burning halberd against the edge of Calyburne.
Then parry my instinctual riposte.
And evaded the following lunge.
Well, I thought as the figure became pronounced from the rest of its kind as they moved into a circular cluster behind it. This is odd.
It stood taller than the rest of its kind, having kept a notion of regality despite shedding its outer skin. A faded cloak of red and blue cloth hung from its shoulders, pinned by a winged broach. A serpentine pattern akin to my own notions of a dragon marked its helm.
The wraith twirled its long halberd with expert ease, lowering into a dueling crouch as it readied its weapon.
"I challenge you!" It growled, thrumming in ancient Aeldari with a deep but recognizably female voice. "Face me in single combat coward. Or are you only fit only to slaughter the memories of low-caste and paupers?!"
Now, the hate pushed back in my mind, giving way to curiosity. Whoever are you?
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Got two stories: An ASOIAF SI Gaemon (Tvtropes) and a 40K Isekai This Won't End Well (Tvtropes) (Info).
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Threadmarks Chapter XCVIII: Wolves at the Gate XIV New
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Mar 20, 2019
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Chapter XCVIII: Wolves at the Gate XIV
829.M30
I had been called a great number of things.
Coward?
Not since a literal life time ago.
"You speak poorly of your own ken," I told the presumed Wraithlord, lowering Calyburne to signal the Raid to cease but remain ready. "I am saddened that I hold your kin in higher regard than you do."
The wraith made a sound that might have been meant as a grunt.
"Death has long worn ago any niceties left over my soul," The words were made grotesque by how unsuited the ancient dialect was to bluntness. "My kin have not been able to call themselves warriors for ages beyond count. Any wealth or prowess cast aside to live as primitives."
I tilted my head at its words, my kin-rage warring against my curiosity and both held back by honour. "And now I am left to wonder which of us stands as their advocate?"
Sensing that more words would yet be traded, the Wraithlord relaxed its posture by a small measure.
"A laughable claim," it said with rattling sound like a bitter laugh. "To call me an advocate. There is little that I would speak well of among my living kind. I would have been content to sit by in idle disgust of this little game as I have all else before. But that," it pointed one bony digit to my white-metal sword. "I will not abide that be used. No crime of my kin deserves that be levied against them."
Oh?
"You object to the death of the soul?" I asked curiously.
"How could I abide such a thing for fools whose greatest crime is listening to the prattle of their over-mighty spawn?" The wraith growled.
I like this one, I mused. "Very well-"
"Lord," Mirko interrupted me, the Gothi looking to the situation warily. "What are you saying?"
"Merely setting the terms for a duel, as is proper," I waved idly in High Gothic. It was fortunate I was not one of my brothers, they took less kindly to interruptions.
"You take time to speak to a subordinate," The Wraith grunted. "At least you do not spit on my honor by implying that you cannot look away."
"Of course," I nodded. "Although I would caution you that it is largely deemed as disrespectful in this age. I am merely schooled in older customs."
"Ha!" It was perverse to see so much life in a phantom possessing a faceless shell. More so when it spoke with a recklessness of wording most Aeldari would be scandalized by. "Well I can mark myself fortunate, for I care little for this age."
"On that we might be agreed," I allowed. The wraith was much better company than the self-righteous xenos that had reacted to my earlier overtures with ambushes and fought despite my offering to spare them. "But such as things are. What are the terms of your challenge?"
The Aeldari spirit made a hissing sound which seemed to be an attempt at a sigh, tensing again.
"Your blade," It grunted. "If I can draw blood, you will spare my kin its bite. I know that you intend to spare the circuit, even as you intend to make the living as soft in form as they are in mind."
I chuckled at the offer, "If you can draw blood?"
"Bold," The Aeldari somehow made a faceless mask seem bitter. "I am called Braeltoc Bold-as-Fire. Not Braeltoc the Stupid. Delusions of my kin and their less realistic descendants do not trouble me. This planet and our people are fallen and my ancient bones cannot end you. I will however fight for the souls of my people."
Huh, I eyed Braeltoc as I adjusted the balance on my own sword.
The way that the wraiths coiled a defensive ring behind her as the raid formed a circle.
My anger eased with sympathy. I could appreciate better than most the desire to protect a world that you yourself felt dissatisfaction with.
It is easy to agree, I mused. But...
"And my motivation in agreeing to such a challenge?" I asked curiously.
"Do you not know the name of this world?" The spirit asked in surprise and grunting when I shook my helmet. "Braeltoic Blathach."
The flowers seeded by Braeltoc.
"Huh," I scanned the armored form. "Knowing your kind, that is shockingly straightforward."
"Fitting, is it not?" The apparent namesake of the world barked a laugh. "I found this world and, to hear some tell it, also its guardian. Defeat me and I will make sure that my old friend lowers his aegis and bears the neck of my useless descendants to your siege forces."
"Your friend is a ship?" I asked with some humor. The Blood-Iron Rose had been a ship to all indications, it made sense that such was her 'friend'.
"Are you one to talk?" Gold asked curiously.
"Consider it a point of commonality," The wraith responded. "That is my offer, let me challenge you for the sake of my kin. Defeat me and spare yours."
"You realize that you sound like an awful Aeldari?" I observed while easing into a fueling stance to show my acquiescence. "Should you not be much vaguer and more ambiguous in your wording?"
"I had assumed that ramming my flagship on as distant a colony as I could purchase from the capital would hint at the regard I have for 'propriety'." The spirit grunted.
"Fair enough," I allowed. "The first strike is yours."
A single beat of my heart marked the time that it took for the wraith to cross the distance between us. Fire encased spear thrusting out from beneath her to puncture the space between my waist seals.
I eased into the force of the strike, bringing Calyburne up and allowing my spare hand to catch the gem-pommel as it swung forwards, accelerating the screaming sword towards the 'neck' of the wraith.
It, no, she perceived the blow and lowered pulled her head back while arresting momentum of her thrust to pull her spear up to catch the momentum of my strike against the pole of the blade and pushing the strike clear of her. I snarled and stamped my foot forwards to reverse the flow of the strike while one of her legs reached forwards and another pushed back to lower and strengthen her center of gravity.
Time caught up with us as sword screamed against the resonating steel of the wraith as we both pushed against each other to win the strike.
Wait… steel?
I blinked and focused on the spear.
It wasn't wraithbone.
The tall spear was made of some sort of metal. Strong, masterfully forged and with spare elaboration besides the draconic pattern of the blade.
I felt a chuckle boiling at my throat at the realization.
Fascinating.
The movement broke as I leveled my strength into a vicious action, pushing my full weight forwards and forcing her back while using the front leg as I center to follow my blade with a vicious kick aimed at her side.
The wraith kicked back from the path of the kick with an agility which would have been impossible for a wraithlord of the usual size, taking advantage of her relatively small figure to jump towards the edge of the platform.
Her spear rotated to fall under her arm while her feet angled towards the floor, catching the floor and allowing her to coil like a spring while her hands lowered the spear and letting her spring forward with a murderous impaling motion. The spear plunging forwards as her arms thrust out with the blade gleaming with fire.
My foot stumped on the ground and launched me forwards, lips pulling back into a feral grin as Calyburne raced down to fall on the haft of the spear.
To my surprise, she caught the action. Legs shooting down and loosening her grip to let the pole flow upwards before tightening and striking Calyburne like a bat and sending me back with surprise.
I laughed despite myself as I adjusted my course, one arm and leg arching back to absorb the force of the blow crashed against a temple's second-story wall unscathed.
"Impressive," I allowed while hopping back down. Her next strike was over ambitious, darting forwards like a hornet and raising the blade in the hopes of catching me off-guard.
My off-hand shot forwards, gauntlet wrapping around the hilt and hold her in place as the wright of my armored knee crashed into her side with all the force of my fall, sending her skidding back. She quickly shifted her weight, abusing my own grip to send us both hurtling into the wraithwork of one of the statues which had not awakened, demolishing some poor king's legacy.
The dust of pulverized wraithbone did nothing to halt either us of as spear and sword clashed with enough force to send it rippling outwards.
I sparsely had enough attention available to hear the cries of encouragement from my own sons and the alien roars of the Xenos, both encouraging their respective champions to push their foe harder.
Not that either of us needed the encouragement.
There was no joy in slaughter and only slightly more in the half-hearted challenge of the Wraiths.
But this wraith, this Braeltoc, she was capable of offering me a true challenge.
"I admit," I laughed with genuine joy as we fell in to an evaluative pattern of parries and gambits to try and spot some weakness. "I had not expected to find a challenge on this world, aside from my own brother."
"If by 'brother' you mean that Mon'keigh-shaped blizzard that is ravaging another of the root-ways as we speak," She responded. "I will take that as complimentary."
"Oh, far from it," I assured my foe while making an exploratory attempt at a decapitation which she batted away by head-butting the flat of the blade away. "I find you much more enjoyable."
"Hah!" The Xenos laughed while turning a thrust into a slash, catching and redirecting the momentum. "Some habits cross species then."
"So they would seem," I allowed while sliding under the slash and following the momentum to a fist crashing against the haft in an effort to knock her off-balance. "Although I find calling my brother sufficiently-sapient for such a comparison mildly rude."
"Do not take it to heart, we do not tend to hold your kind as sapient " She rebutted while using the spiked bottom of her spear in a somewhat brash attempt to gore my helmet.
"We have two hearts as it happens," I responded while swatting away the strike with one hand mid-spin to bring Calyburne into contact with the blade-head she had meant to surprise me with.
"I am not especially given to the studies of the flesh," Brealtoc observed while altering her strike to up to push my blade up and away from her. "Seemed like a nuisance enough when I actually had flesh to worry about."
"Fair," I conceded.
Our duel continued as such, each trying to produce enough of an opening to deal meaningful damage.
It occurred to me that an outside observer might struggle to keep pace with our movements, I knew that I was faster than my brothers with the blade and the Wraith seemed to take delight in being as contradictory to her archetype as possible. It must have seemed a blur of violent movement to another perspective given that we were both only scarcely managing to evade each other.
But eventually, an opening eventually did appear, a strike overly committed on her part that left her flank exposed.
With a roar of exhalation, Calyburne arched as she tried to pull her spear back. Light-laced White-steel digging through wraithbone and carving through her armor and silver-etched circuits. Curiously, I made a conscious effort to avoid the critical systems of the soul-container in order to destroy its animating mechanisms.
But as I felt the pleasure of triumph, my eye caught something.
Her spear had not been coiling around to parry, it had coiled back to strike.
I hissed as the blade drove through a gap in my abdominal plates, cutting through the undersuit and impaling the flesh beneath in searing pain as the last of the grey fire died out.
It was not enough of course, I knew this through the pain as my body's healing mechanisms kicked in and I forced myself to remain standing as the wraith's broken form fell back.
"Which… which do you... think counts first?" She asked with bitter mirth as the shell spasmed and eldritch energies flickered their dying breaths. "My defeat… or your wound?"
Braeltoch asked while struggling to point as the vitae gushing out as I pulled back the blade and allowed entry to Sapphire's internal healer-swarms.
I considered the spear and the red gore on it before allowing myself a chuckle.
"Let's call it a draw," I suggested before tossing the spear to the fallen wraith.
It was impressive that she managed to catch it before the last bits of her soul leaked back to the World Spirit.
"Fair…" She croaked, repeating my words. "Do be careful… My kin will not thank you your nobility."
"Then it is fortunate that I do not care for this age either," I echoed the wraith's earlier words.
"Hah!" The Wraith made a final, grotesque show of emotion before it fell inanimate.
Comment if you want more feedback sustains me! Your opinions are always welcomed!:lol:
Got two stories: An ASOIAF SI Gaemon (Tvtropes) and a 40K Isekai This Won't End Well (Tvtropes) (Info).
Have a lovely day!:lol:
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Threadmarks Chapter XCIX: Wolves at the Gate XV (Morygen PoV) New
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StrangerOrders
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Mar 21, 2019
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Chapter XCIX: Wolves at the Gate XV (Morygen PoV)
829.M30
"You what?" Morygen hissed into the vox.
She had at first been surprised when the vox disruptions that had presumably meant to make the entire Raid one of isolation abruptly cleared up. She had then been glad to hear the voice of her beloved when he reached out through the vox.
And then he spoke and she reassessed her happiness when he commanded that all Moraltaches be withdrawn from the direct lines of combat.
"I gave my word," He said simply through the static of the vox. "And it has won us communications and a now much less hazardous battle above."
"And made my life more difficult," She sighed as she looked down to where her brother-by-marriage was cleaving his way through the statue-horde. "You do not have to keep up with Russ now that he has realized he needs to run to be the first to the prize."
Not that they would have to push much farther, the Sixth were fast on the offensive and they had already crossed most of the distance by her mental model.
"Would it help if I said that I will give you all my Takes from this planet in recompense?" Galtine suggested, small traces of humour detectable through his monotone.
As if you would bother to have takes, she mused as his poor apology brought a fond smile to her lips. "Oh, I will be taking it out on your hide, love. And on the statue-thingies."
"Wraiths," he supplied. "Wraiths."
"Statue-thingies," Morygen repeated. "And we can revisit your right to name things after I am done catching up to our dear brother."
He snorted, "Fair enough."
"Right then," She sighed as she turned off the vox and maglocked Gualguanus to her side while mouthing an apologetic prayer to her family sword. "Breacc, still alive?"
Her guard captain grunted affirmative to her side atop the tower as he kicked a wraithbone snake away with a kick to its face while his party shot at the statue things crawling up the hydrogen-shaped tower.
"Good boy," She said fondly. "To hear your father tell it, there was a warrior here with a very similar name to yours."
"It is not uncommon mother," He shrugged while throwing a melta grenade into the yawning mouth of a great snake-thingy and turning away as the explosion ripped through its body. "There is an odd phonetic similarity between our tongues."
"And yet I can't seem to speak it right," she sighed while bringing together her gauntlets to crack her knuckles. "Well, I'm off the relieve some stress. Try to stay alive boys! No cake for the dead!"
She jumped from the tower to a chorus of, "Yes, mother."
Some unfortunate statue-thingy had been attempting to climb to tower in front of her, which it likely regretted as she pulled her arm back to catch it by the neck with enough force to pry it free from the wall and send it toppling with her. Morygen laughed as she swung the roaring thing before her and shifted her hold so that her boot held its neck back while her hands held each arm back.
Pressing her boot down adjusted the fall and saw her using the thing like a board to ride down the delicate curve of the temple, breaking both the board and wall apart in the process.
She launched herself forwards before they could crash against the floor with a half-laugh half-howl, bringing her weight around so that a poor 'wraith' about to impale an unfortunate Space Wolf on its spear. It was instead thrown hurtling by her flying kick striking the side of its torso with enough force to crater its side.
Morygen landed with a wild chuckle at the site of the dead-thing crashing into a pack of its kin like some ball tossed by a child at a stand of wooden-soldiers.
"Now now, boy," She tisked while pulling the wolf to his feet (and noticing that she had a good head on him after her latest batch of alterations). "You must try to not get into such dramatic situa-"
She was interrupted as one of the half-snakes slithered behind her and attempted to take her by surprise.
Morygen turned away from the strike, lowering herself and bringing her fists up as she did so.
The construct barely had time to register before a series of armor-shattering jabs rained against its torso before an uppercut ripped its head off.
She turned to finish her lecture and frowned as the wolf was already engaged in another battle some seven meters away.
The Sixth are as rude as their father, she grumbled with some humour as she picked her next target and lunged towards it.
Technically, she was moving towards Russ as they advanced. Largely to cut through any Voidbane-shaped problems he might encounter.
But there was also another facet.
Morygen knew that by the color-logic which had been formalized in the legion, she fell too hard into the Red of Ruby. She took a joy in battle that she found in few other things, it was not a thing she had ever had a pretense about. Her purpose was battle in service to a greater cause, since the day she could walk she had been trained towards that end. Science and her Father-By-Marriage's dubious gifts were in the process of making her an even greater tool. It was natural then that she enjoy the thing that she was made for.
The one regret in it was simple, she hated that these wars demanded the flesh of her sons. That she alone could not bear the full weight of the war single-handedly on the part of her Legion.
But even that was lessened on that pleasant occasion.
Her sons were trying to keep up with her, but she wove a path through the carnage designed to ensure that they would follow a relatively safe path.
Which let her enjoy herself.
By the time she caught up with Russ, Morygen could account for another two dozen 'kills' for her tally.
"You really are mad," The Sixth said by way of greeting as he brought his great chainsword down in an arc that severed four of the Wraith-things in half.
"That feels like an odd accusation, coming from you," Morygen commented while cracking a helm open with a series vicious headbutts before bringing her bladed-elbow down to shatter the casing.
"I am not the one fighting Xenos bare-handed," Russ grunted as he caught the sword of a wraith twice his height and arched the blow downwards. Providing the black wolf at his side with an opening to run up the enemy blade a rip its 'neck' open with impossibly sharp fangs, sending the wraith spiraling back over the ramp they had approached. "A little mad can be a good thing though."
"Well, I'm offended," Morygen snorted as she brought another head down into the path of her knee. "One would assume that I am tall enough now to be more than a 'little' mad!"
"You had said that you were still growing," Russ pointed out, stopping for a moment of contemplation as the foe seemed to try to steer away from him. "Oh damn it all, I will not have it be said that I will be outdone by a mortal!"
Morygen frowned as her ears registered that the distinct grind of Krakenmaw suddenly ceased. Oh no, he wouldn't.
She swung under a spear blow to land a crippling strike behind a 'wraith's' knee only to catch the image of Russ somehow strangling a serpent to death on the edge of her vision.
Of course he would, She sighed as the vox was predictably flooded with cries of adulation from the wolves at the 'valor' of their lord.
The battle continued on as they pressed forwards against the thinning waves of wraiths. Morygen understood the death cult-philosophy of the Rout well enough but it unnerved her how readily the wolves praised the deaths among their number. They cheered and whooped for the fallen in a fashion which she found unnerving. It was a different culture, but she idly wondered if Russ at all thought about the seven or so sons he had left on the red snow in his haste.
Ah, she grimaced as she impaled a snake with a spear taken from one of its fallen kin. I have to stop being so grim, they are enjoying this and my guards have a few scratches at worst. I should be having more fun with this!
As if to distract herself, she glanced over to where a not-witch was shaking his fingers, saying some words and proceeding to literally shoot tendrils of lightning from his fingers.
That would have been amusing enough on its own but, whatever else, the wolves were not stupid. The Gothi had aimed at the lower bodies of wraith at the edge of the walkway up which he stood, sending the dead-things flying off and into the depths of the planet.
"Not a witch?" She voxed the priest, 'Leif' if she recalled correctly.
"Not a witch, Lady," The priest responded while moving to repeat a variant of the trick.
"How about 'lightning enthusiast'?" Morygen chuckled when she slid under an overhand strike and let the flow of the strike turn into a throw as she tossed the Wraith by its swordarm.
The priest considered that after another bolt of colorless energy.
"Aye," He agreed. "I am partial to it."
"Good!" Morygen laughed as they pressed forwards. "My alternative name for you was 'zapper'."
"Please stuck mocking my people," Russ sighed as he swung an unfortunate wraith by its tail into a row of its fellows.
Watching their results, Morygen had a strange sensation.
They lacked proportion.
The foe had not really been weak to look at the warn and weary state of the Astartes.
Many were injured, armor burnt or missing chunks from warp guns. Some showed puckering wounds and caked blood which could not have come from anywhere but themselves. Others were missing fingers, hands or even full limbs from the claws and blades of the foe.
Yet she was slaughtering them with her bare hands, almost as easily as Russ was.
It was inconvenient to not use her sword, but she could do it.
In that moment of thought alone, Morygen could really feel herself. The overlapping ribs, the mutated or entirely alien organs working under her flesh, the way networks of muscle and veins in some lights formed runic ward-matrixes.
What the hell did I turn into? The idea came for a single moment before she did what she always did in such moments.
Namely, taking refuge in audacity.
She caught a sword strike by clapping her hands around the clasp and baring her teeth as she twisted the blow's angle so that it cut into one of it's fellows. She swung her weight upwards around the makeshift bar of wraithbone to launch herself upwards.
She curled into a ball as she spun through the air in a controlled arc before unwrapping on the descent, spreading a leg out like an executioner's blade. The gravity-manipulating technologies of her armor hummed as they wrapped around the outstretched limb.
The towering wraith before her was in the process of bringing its blade down on some unfortunate Astartes, a long arm bringing a story-tall sword down at the end of a graceful stroke.
She shattered the wrist with the energy-wrapped force of her kick.
The blade twisted as it fell and she made her landing, adrenaline lowering the speed of the world around her to a near-standstill.
She saw the blade spin slowly until the hand-wrapped hilt aimed towards her and Morygen slammed her fist into the pommel.
And the world sped up again as the wraithbone blade impaled its own master.
She gave a sigh of relief as the last of the wraiths fell around them.
Issues successfully repressed! She smiled beneath her mask while pumping a fist upwards in both mental and physical victory.
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Last edited: Mar 27, 2019
