Umbram Ignis Chapter 23
In the Governor's courtroom all was bedlam, dead men piled everywhere as they slowly cooled and Governor Makham lay bleeding out as his movements grew feeble and weak. Amid that carnage three armoured giants fought twice as many flipping and laughing aliens, in a struggle to decide the fate of a world. Sergeant Priyar was lashing out left and right at alien bodies with his power maul, but they dove and summersaulted around his strikes and he could not land a telling blow. In return their knives darted and bit at his plates, scoring the surface and nicking at the joints.
As he lashed about he could see from the corner of his eye that Jediah was having similar trouble, an Eldar slipping around his Fractal edged short sword as he stabbed impotently at the air. The Eldar met his blade with a parry and it looked like he had an opening, but the Wych spun like silk on the breeze and pirouetted past him. He tried to follow but as he turned another Wych darted in and ripped a blade across the back of his knee joint and he stumbled as transhuman blood spilled out. Elsewhere Imix was beset by a pair of Wyches, his psychic strength was exhausted but he remained an Astartes and used his Force weapon as a quarterstaff. He blocked and parried as best he was able but was slowed by his weariness and it was taking all his strength to merely defend himself.
Suddenly one of the Wyches shrieked in an almost pleasurable pitch and dashed forwards, angling a wickedly sharp blade at Priyar's throat. The Sergeant raised his maul to counter only to realise too late he had been deceived. Another Wych darted in from the side and stabbed up under his raised arm; cutting deeply into his flesh and tearing along his ribs, a few inches deeper and it would have pierced his right heart. Priyar snarled in anger and swept his arm clumsily about but the Eldar danced away with a wicked cackle leaving him clubbing at air. He switched to hold his maul in his left hand but knew that it was futile. The fight was turning against the Space Marines and they were dying by a thousand cuts, unless they defeated their foes swiftly all would be lost.
Priyar threw caution to the winds and risked lowering his defence to raise his power maul high above his head. The Eldar sensed his vulnerability and dived towards him but before they could strike he roared and swept his maul down to smash into the ground. The moment the head touched the floor an actinic blast was released, a flare of light and concussive energies spilling outwards in all directions like a frag grenade going off. The Space Marines were rocked back on their feet as their power armour struggled to compensate for the detonation but the Eldar fared far worse. The shockwave caught them in mid-leap and flung them off balance. The Xeno tried to ride the blast but even they could not compensate totally and for one single second the Eldar were stunned. In that moment the Space Marines attacked, pouncing upon their foes like great felines leaping upon a mouse.
Jediah dived on a thrashing Eldar and plunged his sword into her heart. Imix stomped into the fray swinging his Force staff left and right to shatter skulls and snap limbs. Priyar pounded forward, smashing his power maul down over and over to break spines and stove in ribcages. In mere seconds the Space Marines had snatched victory from the jaws of defeat and one last Eldar Wych was left flopping on the ground, she almost managed to flip back onto her feet but before she could rise Priyar stepped on her head and put all his weight upon it. The flimsy skull imploded and the Eldar was reduced to a gory puddle around his boot.
As the fight ended silence descended and the Space Marines took stock. The room was piled high with bodies and the stench of death pervaded everything as corpses voided their bowels. The Space Marines had won their fight but it may have proved too little, too late for while they had been battling the Governor had gone deathly pale and blood had stopped spilling from his violated guts. Priyar walked over to the body and checked for a pulse but found nothing and he sighed in disappointment.
He leaned back and said, "Dead, we will get nothing from him, whatever secrets he had go with him to the grave."
Jediah refuted, "Not necessarily" as he pulled a short dirk from his belt and paced forwards with a hungry glint in his eye.
Priyar realised what his brother was proposing, for among the many implants an Astartes received was the Omophagea, a deceptively simple organ that could sift organic matter and draw out information at a genetic level. Using this organ a Space Marine could actually ingest a person's or animal's memories and racial instincts thus learning from the experience. The only drawback was the implant lay in the stomach which meant the Astartes had to eat the brain first. Priyar had undergone the ritual during his training but had not done so again since and he had always found it repugnant, Jediah however looked almost eager as he knelt down and began sawing his blade into the scalp of the Governor's corpse, peeling back the skin and bone to reveal the brain beneath.
Imix and Priyar backed off to give him space to work and swept the room for threats but found none. The room was deserted, save themselves and the piles of corpses, yet they were too disciplined to lower their guard and kept a sharp eye for danger. It proved a wise precaution for a few moments later a scrum of guards ran into the room waving lasguns and crying out for the Governor, coming too late to the fight to make any difference.
The guards pulled up short when they saw the piles of bodies and the bloodied Space Marines standing over them. The fools instantly leapt to the wrong conclusion and pointed their weapons at the Astartes in panicked confusion. Normally such an act would warrant instant death, the Astartes did not tolerate threats but Priyar had no wish to slaughter innocents today even if they were fools and barked angrily, "Point those flashlights somewhere else or we will take them from your cold dead hands!"
The men reacted immediately, they had been raised from birth to obey authority and the Space Marines were figures of childhood legends to them. There was no question of them disobeying yet one man, a corporal, seemed to possess a spine for he piped up, "What happened here?"
Priyar spat, "Vile Eldar have murdered your Governor and we punished them for it."
The corporal swallowed and said, "You will have to come with us to answer some questions."
Imix leaned slightly so he loomed over the huddled men and many of them went pale as he growled, "He who stands before the whirlwind shall learn what the wind thinks of fools."
"That means no," Priyar added.
Then the guards spied Jediah bending over the Governor's corpse, to tear chunks of brain matter from the scalp less head and swallow them with a feral glint in his eye. The Corporal raised his gun once more and gasped, "What foul sorcery is this?!"
Priyar slapped the gun from his hands so fast the man had no time to even pull the trigger and the rest of the guards fell back in terror as the Sergeant spat, "This is the work of the Emperor's Angels, try to interfere and I will kill you."
The looming argument was averted as Jediah dropped the governor skull, now vacant of brain matter and spat a gobbet of grey neural tissue to the ground declaring, "There was no trace of betrayal in his memories and he knew nothing about the Xenos, he was not the Traitor we seek."
The assembled guards shrank back from the fearsome sight of the Space Marine with cerebral fluid covering his chin and many of them looked like they wanted to run from the room but were too scared to move. Priyar's hearts sank at the pronouncement, for a moment he believed that they had failed in their mission but then Jediah turned and stomped over the cooling bodies to pick up a bleeding Wych by the back of her neck. The Eldar dangled helplessly from his fist and the limpness of her legs left it clear that her spine was shattered yet she still breathed. Jediah effortlessly threw the broken Eldar at Imix's feet and declared, "This one is only feigning death; tear what you need from its mind."
Priyar cocked his head and said, "Imix have you recovered strength enough to use your arts?"
Imix looked at the Eldar in disgust and said, "You want me to delve into a Xeno's mind?"
His tone made it sound like they had asked him to swim naked in raw sewage but Priyar insisted, "This may be our only opportunity to find the truth."
Imix's face screwed up in disgust and resentment but he still said, "If there is no other way then I shall do it."
The Eldar quit pretending to be dead and tried to shake free but Jediah's grip was an iron vice clamped around her neck. Imix leaned in and drew back his lips over his teeth as he snarled, "This will not be gentle, resist or not as you will but either way I shall not be denied and there will not be much left of your mind afterwards."
The guards looked on in horror as Imix slapped his gauntlet over the Wych's head and she began to convulse. The Eldar shook and drooled as Imix ripped her mental defences apart, she beat her clenched fists futilely on ceramite armour but she was powerless to resist as her mind was vivisected and systematically carved into pieces by the Shade-Seer's psychic scalpels. The Dark Eldar let out a thin scream of horror as she felt Imix destroying her soul's protections against the Warp and her essence drained away by her race's all pervasive nightmare, the monster of their own creation that stalked them from birth, then her eyes rolled up into her skull and she fell limp.
Imix pulled back his hands and said, "I feel befouled, its entire being was polluted by the essence of Chaos, I felt the Prince of Excess consuming the mind even as I tried to read it."
Jediah casually snapped the neck of the drooling sack of meat that was once a Dark Eldar as he asked, "But did you get what we need?"
Imix nodded and said, "I did, I managed to pull the hidden identity of the heretic from the Eldar's soul before it was devoured. I know who betrayed the Imperium."
Priyar was pleased to hear that and said, "Then we must return to the Company, at last we are in a position to take the battle to the enemy."
"You are leaving?!" the Corporal protested, "But what about this mess, what of the Governor!"
Jediah snapped his head around and snarled, "Never stand between an Astartes and his foes, we are leaving... Now."
Priyar agreed and declared, "First we shall hunt down the heretic and exact vengeance upon them, and then the Eldar shall feel our wrath. It is time for the Emperor's Finest to go on the offensive!"