Noctem Oritur Chapter 48
The Emperor's Storm raged in the heart of the Fortress Monastery, tearing down deep corridors and into vaults that had never been violated in thousands of years of service. The gales swept along the passages in a howling torrent, tearing at fixtures and battering secure hatches with skin-scouring force. The shrieking of the wind acted as herald of its coming everywhere and it resonated down the honeycomb of tunnels under the Fortress, filling it with a banshee wail.
Across the length of the island men and mutants looked up in stunned confusion, their enmity put on hold as they tried to understand what was happening. The native Lujanites reacted first, recognising what was to come from a lifetime of experience and they moved with instinctive speed. From the highest peak to the lowest depths men turned their backs on their foes and flung themselves into shelter, huddling under heavy machines, clinging to piles of girders and cowering in whatever holes they could find. The mutants were slower to realise their peril, they stood around confused or tried to follow their fleeing opponents, thinking to stab them in the back, but they were too late to recognise the danger they were in. The wind roared down the passages and hit the exposed crowds of mutants with the force of a freight train, bowling them over effortlessly and scattering them before its might.
Bodies were picked up by the unstoppable gales and slammed with bone shattering force against walls and ceilings, then they were dragged off and hurled into another wall and another, each impact snapping limbs and cracking spines. Piles of thrashing bodies built up in corners and since all of them had been openly carrying ritual knives and jagged tools they ended up impaling themselves on their comrades' weapons, dying in the most obscene parody of war. Many of the limp corpses were then dragged along rough surfaces by the wind, crashing into more cowering mutants who had escaped the initial frenzy; they were knocked out of their shelter and immediately joined the calamity.
Many of the mutants tried to escape the natural disaster, clinging to walls and burrowing under debris but they did not understand what they were doing and they did not have time to process what was happening. Many times a cultist would think he had found shelter only for the wind to devilishly turn and twist, then come in from a new direction, tearing open rude protections and ripping flailing bodies out into the open. Only a native Lujanite could have recognised genuine safety at a glance, only someone with a lifetime of experience with the storm could have known how to protect oneself from being torn out of hiding and rendered limb from limb by flying debris.
Along the coastline the seas rose up and cascaded into the broken structures, flooding whole regions thought previously secure and sweeping razor sharp debris along with it. The outer districts were almost exclusively the realm of the invaders now and they were stunned to see walls of water barrelling down upon them, smashing them from their feet and drowning them in droves. The storm plunged deeply within the Fortress, finding all and ripping apart any who had not properly secured themselves, any who did not immediately seek protection. True hundreds of serfs died anyway in the calamity, but in the first five minutes ten thousand cultists were killed and the death toll of the invaders was rising with every second.
In the very heart of the Fortress the storm encountered another kind of battle, this one of transhuman against transhuman, locked in a furious slaughter that would not be denied. These warriors refused to be cowed by something as mundane as the environment and secure in their power armour they fought on, but just because they could stand in the storm did not mean they could ignore it. The force of the wind dragged on weapon arms, slowing strikes and pulling them off target, while the weight of it skewed their balance and disrupted their guard stances. For the Traitors it was most disconcerting, these were the warriors who had fought across nightmare Daemon worlds and battled on the shores of acid seas, they had killed men under burning suns and scrabbled to live in vortexes of raw insanity. Yet for all that they had not experienced the raw elemental power of the storm and even the most gifted transhumans would need a few seconds to adjust, time the Loyalists had no intention of giving them.
As one the Storm Heralds flung themselves at the Traitors, riding the winds with a cry of righteous vengeance on their lips as they sought to end this once and for all. Unlike the heretics the loyalists knew this storm intimately, they knew how to let it carry them forwards and how to weave in its currents, they knew the exact moments to pause and could see the perfect time to strike. It was the most microscopic of differences, barely detectable to the eyes of a mortal man, but to the Transhuman Space Marines the imbalance between the two sides was blatantly obvious and it was all that was needed to tip the scales of battle.
With the hurricane empowering them Storm Heralds carved into Chaos Marines. Their blows had the power of tornadoes behind them and their speed was magnified by the potency of the hurricane. They reaped the Traitors like chaff while return blows skittered harmlessly off ceramite plates, knives being turned aside at the last moment by the dragging of the gale and scores of Night Lords were ripped asunder by the invigorated loyalists. It was almost pathetic to see how easily the Traitors went down, these were the warriors who had burned worlds, they had proudly slaughtered whole armies and reduced fortresses to rubble but now they were dying as easily as mere mortals.
The Chaos Marines were carved apart in a frenzy of righteous bloodletting and for the first time in their fiendishly long lives they were helpless to resist, but none of them had it so bad as Vorshaan. The Dusk Prince had been caught by the first gust to blow down the corridor and it snapped his mutated wings out behind him, filling the membranes like sail cloths. Vorshaan was snatched up by his wings and hurled against the nearest wall, cracking granite and making his ceramite armour creak and groan. Before he could move the wind shifted and he was flung up towards the ceiling, helpless as a leaf as he slammed face-first into the roof, then back down to the floor before being dragged along the ground in a tangle of wings and armour. He tried to dig in with his clawed fingertips but his own mutations worked against him and he could not resist as he was hurled into a wall and held there by the press of the wind like an insect under glass.
On the other side of junction Toran could see the Dusk Prince's struggle and knew there would only be one opportunity to strike but he had to wait to pick his moment. His own cloak billowed around him, dragging him off balance but he knew this tempest intimately and he stood true amid the gale. His genhanced hearing could hear Vorshaan screaming into his vox, calling for reinforcements and his lackeys Beta and Gamma to come to his aid, but clearly nobody was responding. Toran felt the wind shift and knew his moment had come, he pressed forwards and felt the currents of air hesitate for an instant then he was running straight at his hated foe.
Vorshaan looked up and saw the Captain coming, his wings drooped for an instant in the stillness and he cried, "What is this?!"
Toran felt the wind stir at his back and he leapt into the air even as a fresh gale thundered in from behind him, filling his cloak and driving him forwards with inexorable force. He raised his sword and felt the hurricane lending power to his arm as he cried, "This is the Emperor's Storm!"
He flew at the pinned Dusk Prince like an avenging angel and hit the cur full on, driving his sword deeply within the corrupted chest plate as Toran roared into his opponent's face, "We are His wrath!"
Vorshaan's eyes widened in disbelief and shock at the impact then he spat black blood down his chin as the reality of his situation hit him. He struggled feebly but his strength was dissipating by the second and he could barely lift his arms let alone fight back. The blade had rammed straight into his chest, destroying his primary heart and stabbing out the other side to fix him to the wall. Toran twisted the blade to saw the wound open and Vorshaan shrieked in denial as his lifeblood poured out. Toran drove the blade sideways, trying to carve out Vorshaan's other heart, but before he could finish the job a new weight crashed into him, a pair of Night Lord bodyguards pushing him away.
Toran fell to one side and his sword ripped out of the Dusk Prince's chest; he met the pair head on as the storm billowed round them and stole the words from their lips. With the howling surrounding them the pair came at Toran in a flurry of stabs but their aim was off and the Captain let the blows score across his plate harmlessly. In return he struck off the head of the first with a lateral cross that sprayed arterial blood over the walls. The other came at him in a rush but Toran twisted and pushed, driving his opponent forwards to smack headfirst into a wall. Before the heretic could recover Toran slashed his sword across the Traitor's back, easily penetrating the ceramite to sever his spine, then he let the filth collapse into a crippled heap before stamping down and crushing his skull.
Toran wasted not a moment but spun around to finish off Vorshaan but he was aghast to see the Dusk Prince was gone. Where the Arch-Traitor had been was only a puddle of blood and the rent, ragged remnants of two wings. The cur must have severed his own wings to escape the storm's effects then dragged himself away to die in some forgotten corner. Toran roared in denial and frustrated rage, he spun about to see where the Traitor could have gone but all he saw were his men hacking down the last of the Night Lords, leaving heaps of corpses everywhere. His mind instantly calculated the numbers and saw that a half-dozen Night Lords were unaccounted for; they must have fled with their lord. Still the Captain had twenty-eight brothers still with him, more than enough to finish the fight.
Toran called over the howling of the wind, "Did anyone see where the bastard fled?"
Novak called from a corner, "There a trail of blood over here a first-year aspirant could follow."
"Good," declared Toran raising his blade, "Let's get after him, Vorshaan shall not escape justice this time. It's time the Storm Heralds ended the Dusk Prince once and for all!"