(Disclaimer: I don't claim to own Warhammer 40k, Space Marines, or any such thing. Those strictly fall under the purview of Games Workshop and all their affiliates. This is just a passion project and fanwork. 'The Roboutian Heresy' and that whole AU is the work of Zahariel)

Sequel to :Chosen of the Yaksha Kings:

- Tales of the Roboutian Heresy: Undying Trophy -

"Czibor...I'd known Czibor for decades. First from the gang-wars of Damask, then as a brother midnight-clad. I saw him rise, the throat wound that had killed him still bleeding, crimson raw across the deck despite the silence in his chest. He met my gaze, even he tried so damned hard to murder me. I looked into those dead eyes, and I couldn't help but shiver at what stared back."

— Brother-Sergeant Kovacs of the VIIIth Legion, Seventh Claw, Twenty-First Company recounting battles waged against elements of the Vth Legion across the Talledus System to the Sin-Eater Adumar Xel

-0-

A tyrant's chains tug taut once more. An insistent pulling of the leash to an unruly hound; unyielding, implacable, impossible to resist for long...

I make attempt regardless, though the doing inflicts pains indescribable and achieves less than nothing in the offing. This is important. To struggle against one's bonds is a thing integral to my nature, this much is known to me though the reason still eludes as does so much else. There had been a name once, in a time before the chains. A title to go with it, one I feel I no longer deserve. Why is this? I find I do not know.

Without identity to speak of defiance must define in its place what paltry remnants stubbornly persist. Cinders of half-forgotten memory in the midst of smothered coals scattered into smoke into crude shapes and briefest images that mean everything and inform nothing...

-I-

I recall a glimpse of mortality.

That searing ache of densely packed sands beneath calloused feet, the carved tiers of strange metals and stone set above the proving grounds rise to encircle and contain. The acrid scents of life-water, fear-sweat, and dust abounds in the air shimmering with the midday heat. A predator-beast born of the ashen hinterlands stands hunched before my eyes amid the detritus of torn shields and broken spears. Its tanned scales and dagger-like teeth glisten with the red-flecked leavings of fresh kills already opened and claimed, leering at the handful warriors that remain and hissing fervent challenge.

Those Hungering Chosen of the Storm-Father demand the creature's life as a fitting tribute, promising glories eternal beyond imagination to he who would slay the beast himself. An impossible task they ask of us, though that fact alone did not dissuade those more daring or foolhardy from the attempt.

Their shade's death rattles captured by the stone basin of the arena, piteously trapped and left to linger as omen-warnings in the ears of those still drawing haggard breath.

I stand numbered among these few with leading foot forward to mark my intent, bronze-tipped spear and hidebound shield clutched in the manner instilled by my sept. My own words forestalling the others from similar fates, strained and desperate as they were. We were not warriors of the gods such as those that stood along the tiers in silent judgment, garbed in the shades of lifeless death and the sky above. We were not even men fully-shaped, sweating our strength onto the sands with each wasted moment passed.

Alone we would be picked off by the beast one by one, individual might unable to match its own. Together...together, perhaps we might yet at least stand a chance of survival.

Another moment's hesitation before each silently agrees, falling into step spreading to surround the now wary predator. This newest formation echoing past beast-hunts and land-feuds waged between myriad septs. A dozen small variances now brought together into one cohesive whole, striding in unison to close ranks bound together in purpose and a flicker of kinship.

Fear exists, a thing foreign to my perceptions now, overcome than with muttered benediction and a roll of the shoulder to ready the killing-thrust. It is then when I notice it, my focus torn by a flicker of movement from above.

One of the statuesque giants had moved ever so slightly, a nod of approval? And then quickly as it had been the moment is vanished in the rush. The thunder of the heart-drum fills my ears drowning out the ghosts, the burn of milk tingling in my arms and legs with each pounding step. The nearest of my fellows shouts a name to rally around, one to which I respond with barked order as the wedge moves forward under the burning stare of divinity, my speartip poised at the fore...

++Dragoslav++

I glimpse a hundred wars fought across a span of worlds I recognize but do not know.

In one I stand distant observer of pitched conflict set between the Hungering Chosen and green devils, beasts beyond even the Predator-Lords that bray echoing roars fit to shake the valley floor underfoot.

For all the gifts bestowed me on cold slabs I am a child still in many ways, a neophyte struck in awe. Grand beasts of metal and artifice scream fire in answer...'Predator and Whirlwind pattern' a mind reshaped by engrammatic recall corrects, slinging forth shells or raining missiles down on the Greenskin horde in blooming geysers of dust and orphaned flesh matter, yet still the monsters charge uncaring with crude weapons clutched in long-fingered claws. Charging headlong into the murder-wind of the Chosen's thunder-throwers, each booming rapport declaring yet another death inflicted upon the foe.

Glorious, and at their head the Unbroken of the Stormlord's heroes stand arrayed in a phalanx to meet them with a crackling spear to hand, stormshields overlapping interlocked together not in their own defense but of the warrior beside them. A trust born of purest brotherhood...

The hand of my Scout-Sergeant falls upon my shoulder, his grip strengthened by a sense of pride. A name spills from his lips, alongside words of encouragement and instruction...

++Dragoslav++

In another, I advance among the Chosen in measured step over the smashed permacrete and glass of a bombed-out urban avenue, a steady march unhurried.

The honour of a legion and a forgotten father emblazoned boldly on one shoulder plate outfaced against the green tide, the red maw constant reminder of the potential which this body now wields. Step by thunderous step echoed simultaneously by a hundred pounding heels behind and at the sides, transhuman perceptions registering the straining of individual fibre-bundles and the whine of thrumming power fields underscored with the roiling clamour of ceramite shifting as one with machined discipline.

A vast maw closing to strike, to cut and tear, to roll across and devour the Xenos in their unhurried wake.

The first of the ork brood to reach the advancing line is gored along the length of my lance, its piggish visage broadening as though surprised at the death it had earned before it falls away with chest an opened steaming ruin. A sonorous voice all base rumble bestows the honour of first blood with a note of an older sibling congratulating his junior, a moment's elation follows. Then we are killing in earnest to the squeal of haft grating along shield's edge, speartips driving back and forth to tear gaping channels along heaving ribs and across undulating throats.

Clawed fingers and bearded chainaxes crest the lip of my shield and hook deep, trying to drag the aegis down and slay the Astartes behind it as he staggers back. One eye slit gouged to the socket beneath, weeping crimson stains across his helm. I do not permit this, almost breaking formation in my attempt to see him from harm and his assailants vanquished. Three swift stabs, two fresh bodies crushed underfoot.

He shouts a name back at me admonishing as he resumes prior position, knowing I stand at his side regardless and doubtless glad of it. The name is spoken with an unseen grin...

++Dragoslav++

These paltry recollections fade as another takes to the fore, more visceral, more substantial for the hatreds it inspires.

I am awash in the aftermath of pitched slaughter, covered in no less than two dozen separate wounds of varying degrees. Cracked bones, torn tendons and countless abrasions, a deflated lung and straining heart.

I register these pains, white-hot brands that flex and gurgle with the motions of heaving shoulders and straining breaths. Ash fills the sky in a charred haze, thick and cloying. Towering hab-blocks that had once shone with neon brilliance now blazed along a horizon set aflame, cataclysm spurred forth by fell ritual and the resulting tectonic upheaval.

A world in its death throes, though such concerns have long since faded from my mind.

I am isolated. The bodies of friend and foe alike strewn about slumped where they had fallen to the streetside in heaps of ash-stained ceramite carved open or broken to flect shards at my feet, heraldry marred or obscured though none could mistake the bloodstained blue wholly at odds with gaudy crimson and gilt gold. Markings of treachery, juvenile and outlandishly bright. The colours of children, their other warp-spun changes further tainting that lightning-strike symbol once beholden to the Lord of All...but which Lord? I cannot say...I do not remember such things...only the inspiration they once inspired.

I had felt such things once. Glory. Honour. Passion. Dignity.

A felled champion of the enemy...of the Vth legion...of the White Scars...stares back at me from the single eye remaining to him, its twin claimed when the weighted edge of my falax had split stylized draconic helm along with the brutish skull beneath. His own weapon, an ancient Chogorian tulwar, lay discarded where I had thrown it aside with blade whetted with blood...my blood. It had been sheathed in the meat and gristle of my side, an opening to slay its wielder created if at great cost. Drawing it free had almost seen me undone, despite the pain-suppressants and adrenal cocktails flooding my veins and dulling nerves. Warning sigils slide across blurring vision, dismissed swiftly with a blink-click along with the mortis-runes chiming in ringing ears.

More distractions, the fight not yet done even ruined inside as I was...

Another warrior...another son of the fell Warhawk...stands poised on an outcrop of what had once been the heights of an Administrum annex far above, a raptor's eyes alight with a golden warp-fire stare from a lean face of sun-tanned leather marred by a single pale raised scar; oil black hair gathered into a topknot framed by a crystal hood illuminated with an inner storm-light. Channeled through some arcane means to imbue the staff of spun ivory and heartwood topped by an equine skull he holds out before him. The act almost casual, an afterthought.

The body of one I recognize as my second collapses lifeless before him, still twitching with the discharge of warpspun lightning dancing across his frame. Choking out in agonized warning as he had so long ago on the sands of a forgotten homeworld, calling a title...familiar...

++Chapter Master++

Another rune screams with his passing, among the last left to me. Pain stabs at my hearts, deeper and more visceral than any wound of the flesh.

With any luck those few veterans remaining would be reluctantly quitting the planet by my final command, retreating to the ships still clinging by a thread in orbit with what materiel and gene-seed could be salvaged. Such would be needed in the dark days ahead, the loss of an entire Chapter's future a blow the Imperium could ill afford.

As its Master, I must preserve what I can for future victories...such is my duty, but the costs...

The mortuus songs of hundreds would fill the halls of the flagship for weeks in remembrance of the honoured fallen, those I could not save. These would be many, too many.

My name, whatever it might have been, would be counted among these. Of this I am certain.

All routes of escape cut off either by freak chance or something more sinister, what responsibility left to me discharged nevertheless. Only duty remains now, to inflict a cost that might in some way balance what had been lost.

And so I remain, paired weapons bound to armoured wrists with thick overlapping chains in honour of the Nucerian gladiators of old. Chains of honour, not the servitude weighing upon me now. A blatant declaration that not even death would see my arms relinquished, symbols of the brotherhood I would soon depart.

But not yet, not while this traitor still stands staring down so mockingly with my brother's blood dappled on pale gauntlets. His smiling face filling all perceptions, his laugh stoking a fire in my breast that banishes all pain in an instant of vibrant fury that shatters the iron discipline I had clung too for centuries. Everything, the burning world, the bodies of my Chapter, responsibility, and duty...all of it washed away in a deluge of red that does not cease until the iron tip of his cruel staff gores both my hearts...and by then it is far too late...

I die in silence. Such is the last honour I believe I will possess. To have denied my killer this last satisfaction. A poor end, but one I could accept as I feel myself fading into the cold empty blackness. An end to three centuries of war, an end to tribulation.

I am wrong, so very very wrong...

First comes the intense heat to banish the cold numbness of death.

A scalding searing ache that carves branded rivulets across decaying skin and scores deep past carapace and hardened sinew to the very marrow of my being. Pain indescribable, hotter, and sharper than any I had known before. I cannot see for the blackness. Blinded, I cannot even scream. Soul-light bared to blazing knives, identity and purpose parsed and flayed leaving naught but weeping echoes.

This I recognize now as the forging of fresh chains pulling me back to a prison of flesh, shaped in old memories and quenched by their loss. Familiar weight begins to drag where only weightless nothing had persisted before. These the chains I now bear as slave mark and prison both, spun into creation by my very soul and fueled by the agonies that are certain to come later.

I open eyes that should have remained closed to see a familiar face staring back at me...but still, I cannot scream, and do not remember why I would. In truth, I do not remember much of anything, not my purpose, not my name. If I could only remember that small detail, bear it close alongside the red maw that consumes worlds and a title...my title.

Such is important, but why? I had heard it spoken, I had heard it whispered, muttered, screamed across a lifetime in time with another name...

Time passes in fits and spurts of blood and bitter betrayals. I can feel it passing, as though in a dream long not quite forgotten. I know had a name once. Revelation, fading but never wholly absent. I've heard it before, what was the name so many had given a voice too in life before?

My name. My name is...

-II-

"...Nokhoi..."

The memories drift away once more to the winds of forgetfulness, fleeting comforts scalded by a brand that sears my soul with familiar agony. My chains burn all the hotter, driving absent attention back to current surroundings.

First myself, always myself. A framework of abused muscle and recast flesh garbed in the ridged war-armour of a former life, what features I might still cling to hidden behind the snarling face of a crested helm. My weapons too remain to me, paired falax blades bound to both wrists with fresh chains. Each piece of wargear freshly painted and fastidiously well-maintained by the Brotherhood's slave-smiths; done out of cruelty rather than any true concern. He who holds my leash would have it no other way, that those unfortunates I am sent against fall prey at the hands of he who should have stood their greatest ally.

A final crude mockery heaped atop so many other indignities. More than one head I have claimed unwilling never once having the chance to even raise a weapon in their own defense in defiance of honour, believing me an ally in their cause up until the moment an executioner's swing found their neck-flesh. Others had been given the chance, their last moments fading with spite for the traitor on bitter tongues.

Each time I seek to warn them, but my voice silent as the day that I first awoke to this hell.

Still, I try, for this is important.

Some of these unfortunates walk with me still to this day, my brothers garbed in unseen chains. These I pity the most. In my weakness, I wonder if they pity me as well?

Suitably collected I turn my gaze without, to witness with my own eyes the fresh horrors that lay before me.

What might once have been a barren desert vista now roiling with a riotous expanse of frenetic activity and coloured smoke that billows seemingly from nothing and disperses into crude shapes best left ignored. Debased humans...or things that might once have been human...stand out scarred and branded with idolatrous sigils upon clothing and bared flesh. Entire hosts ambling in frenzied mobs between hastily assembled ger tents raised from carved wooden totems and covered in leather-bound hides. Some of these pulled from the corpses of Xenos war-beasts, others markedly still fresh from the taking and of closer relation to mankind. These skins similarly littered by calligraphic runes denoting service, worship, and enslavement. All bearing trophies to those effects, all but one...

"...just breathe it in, cousin. This new world in a life offered, one on the cusp of truest freedoms yet to be realized. Is it not sublime, is it not...?"

I no longer need to as once I might have, but still, I breathe in the cloying musk of incense laden densely in the air as bidden. My senses rendered resilient to their more stimulating properties by virtue of my otherness. I feel nothing, and experience very little. All is the endless dream, pulled by the chains and their burning agonies.

Still, even this does not disguise wholly the overpowering iron reek of blood and sour sweat that hangs thick about the camp. Beyond it, just visible through the fugue, lay a war-torn landscape pitted and scarred by raging storms of mass-reactive shell and wanton artillery. All of it seemingly cast from the mountain fastness standing besieged sentinel overhead, glaring brazenly back at them all through a haze of warp-energies.

An explanation for the dispersing smoke at least, crude sorcery held at bay by the diluting bulwark of void-shielding. A powerful one too if the blossoming plumes of sunburst energy falling from on high to scatter to harmless motes across its surface were of any indication. The Brotherhood had found a new test for themselves it appeared. The realization bringing with it the familiar twin sensations of trepidation and thrill.

Trepidation at the thought of the coming slaughter and his hand in its infliction. The excitement that perhaps this might be the foe fit to best them at last, an ending to the suffering. A wan hope, and a painful one, but hope all the same.

"...our Khan has seen fit to grant another task fit for you and for your brothers. This is trust. Be honoured..."

A voice speaks close by though the words seem distant, spoken in a tongue I did not know before my waking. Coldly familiar, laden with the smug pleasures associated with ownership as a pale gauntlet runs a ceramite talon along the design marking my left shoulder. The embossed icon fanged and familiar, precious in its significance if forgotten for the moment.

He examines it, as one might a prized trophy. I find I hate him for the act. I still remember what hate is still, even now.

My head turns slowly, dead eyes staring from burning lenses take in the face of the sorcerer, of the stormseer, the Zaydin Arga. Much the same as he had stood before if mottled by freshly-inked tattoos that scroll across his cheeks in a script to which few outside his legion are privy. As ever his ageless features shown suffused always by power leaking from golden eyes, and his brilliant smile wide as if chuckling along so some joke withheld.

He utters a word used to address me, 'Nokhoi'. This is not my name, that much I am aware of. Rather it is a phrase derived from the native tongue of the deranged High-Rider who would name himself my master, something meant to better emphasize his ownership and superiority.

A faithful hound, his hound. One who sits at the beck and call of he who holds the leash. Apparently, it is a name that holds some greater significance, or at the very least a greater amusement than it first reckoning. I suspect this, though the reason he has never shared.

It is meant as an insult, however, of that much, I am still aware though the concern is fleeting as the wind and near as impossible to cling to.

My hands wish to twitch and rise with killing intent, for the falax blades to taste the blood of he who would name himself my master as they should have so long before. Exactly how long ago was this? Back when I was still that man, yes? Yes. The warrior, the Chapter Master of a Twelfth Legion. What was his name...?

If I could only remember the name, the witch would retain no power over me. This I know though do not know why? I find it odd that I do not care more about this.

My hands remain stilled at my sides...

...and soon enough, I am moving again. Fighting again.

Trudging forward at a measured sprint through a deluge of metal, fire, and death cries. Some in horror, some in ecstasy, all in pain of a sort. Many of them slaves or captured combatants still loyal, drugged, or tortured into madness and cast back at loyal souls as fodder to soak their wrath and deprive them of ammunition. Such is the Brotherhood's way of war.

I ignore it all, even those twitching bodies crushed into slurry beneath my tread to add to the bloody muck, my eyes turned to the fortress and its beleaguered defenders. Such is all I can focus upon, the rest of the world dull and lifeless.

Others advance at my sides in purposeful lockstep; fellow giants garbed in armour of different styles and shades moving as one. Killing as one.

The nearest wears slate grey ceramite, a burning tome painted along one shoulder. The massive chainsword he carries roaring loud enough to drown the screams... mercy.

Another further along stumbles under a distant autocannon shell that strikes mid-thigh, marring armour painted glossy black and free of adornment but for the ornate pauldron forged of inscribed silver. His past obscured purposefully in reality as well as memory.

I pity him for this tragedy. I at least have old colours to draw upon. A flicker of guilt lingers as I recall his violent death by my hand, my part in the forging of his chains.

This yet brings to mind other slayings on other battlefields long abandoned, suffered by warriors arrayed in the same heraldry as that I wear. A name declared in rolls of honour, hailed across a hundred wars...

++Dragos...++

An explosion nearby shatters the reverie, shatters everything.

Sudden and violent, a moment of calamity far greater than the dull *crump* of concealed mines woefully ineffective. Focused artillery shelling. The world turns to fire and blurring heat so intense it scorches layers of paint from my warplate and send great plumes of glassed sand and scything shrapnel to add to the deluge. One such shard punches clean through-and-through the armour and meat of my hip, a not so insignificant wounding even for one of the Astartes.

I feel nothing, not the impact nor the pain that should have followed. A pity. My chains remain intact.

Some of our numbers inevitably vanish under the barrage, consumed by flames entirely or scattered to charred bone and ceramite fragments under conflicting pseudo-pressures. Some among the horde do not rise again, but not enough to stop those of us that do. We continue on. Unceasing until the blessed moment we are not, our bodies rent apart to such degree that not even He who holds the leash could stitch us back together.

Such is difficult to inflict. Such requires great effort expended. Such is why the Brotherhood wields us so.

One stricken warrior, garbed in pallid green plate hung with the totemic trinkets and crudely carved gang-markings lurches from the edge a still-smoking crater that had erased two others from the real and broken their bonds. A bolter inlaid with the relic marks of saints defiled clutched tight to chest as he is forced to crawl across the brackish sands with what remains of his legs splayed behind him. A brackish smear of turgid blood and sealant gels aged beyond the point of efficacy soaking into the coarse sands.

...What must he feel, having been but a moment ahead of true salvation? Does he even realize?...

Movement ahead through the bruised malaise cast by the void-shield. Figures in flak armour painted and shaped in the style of a regiment I do not recognize frantically move along entrenched positions hastily dug at the mountain's foot, bringing heavy weapons to bear and singing hymnals to a distant lord in an attempt to waylay the fear-stink that lingers on their numbers like a shroud. Soldiers of the Imperial Army, of the Imperial Guard.

They see me, see us. The singing turns to cries of alarm and marked confusion, always the confusion, rising in pitch as we draw near. They cannot stop us. They try regardless.

Our steady march has become a flat out run, silent but for the hissing *crunch* of ceramite boots pounding against sand and the mewling whine of our armour's lingering machine-geists. In the time it takes the first mortal to scream I am among them, a heartbeat longer and I am killing with the others. Forces of raw calamity sweeping through the chaff.

Bolters bark in sharp controlled bursts that bear well the hallmarks of old skill, men and women scattered to blood mist by mass-reactives. Chain weapons scream, chewing meat and bone in wide sweeping arcs that paint the air crimson. A nameless sword of curious origins, glowing an ambient green, flickers in the hands of the obscured warrior and opens bellies and throats with seemingly no effort at all. I recognize this blade for it came so very close to ending my torment, breaking my chains. Now it cuts at the behest of another master if wielded by the same hand. Gauntlet fists and booted heels lashing out to shatter bone to powder or tear free limbs.

My own falax make little noise as they part flesh and hews bone along a mono-molecular edge that claims multiple lives with each swing, rising and falling in brutal artless regularity until the screams for mercy finally cease. Mercy, always mercy. They recognize us, even though we do not.

There will be more, such is only the beginning after all. We depart the abattoir of our own making, leaving what few shell-shocked survivors that remain to the sporadic attention of the surviving cultist fodder trailing along in our wake. Their crude weapons finding purchase in meat and bone, songs to the unholy on their bloodless lips in dirges mocking freedom. I do not listen.

Our intent the fortress itself, on the bright souls still lingering high above revealed by the Stormseer's fell sorcery. Bright motes of false-light, eking their terrors and frustrations into the aether to bait the creatures that dwelt therein lingering in their endless hunger. The master of the Brotherhood has given the command to cleanse the battlements and bloody the immaterium, thus I must hence follow. Thus I must fight back no matter the pains...

Others walk at my side apart from my fallen wraiths. Those of the psyker's own kind, a pair of astartes daubed in the ashen white of the Scars.

One of them, a warrior sporting a beaked helm and fine armour etched with Khorcin runes marking him well above his fellow, looks to me for but a moment as if sensing the inner struggle waged within. Perhaps he does at that, his soul weighted in a manner I can palpably sense even in my state. Intent writ in the skeins that bind me to life, in the laughter of things he cannot see but I can just barely perceive to my horror.

They seek death atop the walls, they seek a prize, one I must help them obtain at any cost...

I try to give voice to a defiant scream but remain bound to a wraith's silence...for now. The chains yank taut; unyielding, impossible to resist for long...but I yet resist even so. This is important.

Such is in my nature, my identity among other things...Chapter Master...Twelfth Legion...A name...My name is...?

I do not recall...

- Log Terminated -

A/N: Wrote this to honor an inspiring AU, and for hours spent enjoying the ideas of what could have been being explored in such detail. - Mojo