Chapter 28: Defiance and Betrayal
The brief foray into Erebus's sanctum had been an uncomfortable one. Even now, Kal Belekar's senses were swimming with the unnatural touch of the warp as he emerges from the cairn. The Warmaster's attendants fade away. His retinue stood awaiting him, all but his lieutenant who had disappeared. Not that it was unexpected. There were greater plans ahead for the chosen sons, and the captain was under no illusions as to what would happen
"Captain," Sergeant Danok respectfully inclines his head, "What are our orders?"
A gentle quiet greets the question as Kal Belekar takes a steady breath. He doesn't stop, but carries on outside the neos, and into the rancorous main chamber. All around him was the revelry of mortals, each according to their appetites and tastes. But the solemnity didn't escape from the dozens of grey armored figures who stood facing him, detached from the world around them.
'What a marvel it is, that it should be destroyed.'
The Word Bearer's captain skims past the mortals and looks too the neolithic crafting that had given birth to the Delphos. The ancient black stones shine, lovingly polished monoliths rise next to rough stalagmites fifty meters high to the bubbled and pitted ceiling of the ancient grotto. For countless tens of thousands of years this was here, a conduit to the gods.
And he knew what would happen.
What was destined.
"Well, Danok, we have our orders. While the esteemed First Chaplain is indisposed, I hope you'll forgive a captain trying t play the part of a chaplain." the captain looks to the group of astartes around him. Kal Belekar could feel the smile slip onto his lips, knowing a few of his legionnaires would do the same behind their unyielding helms. He knew them for decades in some cases, seeing the austere group of devotees arrayed before him. He'd caught their attention, and thus the captain pauses, gathering himself up for what he had to do.
"Brothers," Kal Belekar begins in deepest solemnity. The astartes vox net crackles for a moment. The revelry of the unaware mortals go on unchallenged, but the warriors atop the steps and perched atop the marvelous monolithic blocks all turn their attention to him.
"We have been given the deepest and most sacred of distinction. Here, upon Davin, we chart the course for ages to come. Our father, the Urizon, has let it fall to us, the chosen of the Colchis, to begin this great reclamation. Each and every one of us knows what's at stake. We have been privy to the lies and falsehoods of those that would deny the very existence of powers beyond their ken. We have heard their sacrilegious orators and bore witness to the depravity of the unfaithful."
With a silent gesture, the captain holds out one hand, palm upwards and spread. "Let us give thanks, for we were gifted with the knowledge of good and evil. We were allowed the first glimpse of truth, so that we may share it with the galaxy. We are the champions of mankind's freedoms, the guardians to the gate of tomorrow. But if we were to suspect that we would defend our freedoms without sacrifice, it would be to say that what we treasure is worthless. Today we have been called upon to defend what we hold dear, and in doing so, may pave the way for our misguided brethren."
The Word Bearer captain takes another long breath, waiting until his warriors turned their hands upward in the ritualized symbol of their congregation. He didn't need to look around to know when they had all done so. "Already our brothers march to the gallows against those we would call kin. This is their day, this is our day, a red day. The First Day. Gird yourselves for war, and wrath. Carry out your orders and do our legion proud. For we shall be the first to stand defiant against the False God. And let us pray that our brother's eyes are opened. From the darkness, we bring light. From the Shadows, we shall arise. We are not afraid of standing against the Great Usurper. From Dawn till dusk, in night and in day, from birth to death, we live to serve. And even in death, we still serve."
As one voice, scores of legionnaires intone, 'Glory to the martyrs!'
Their captain reaches to his sheathed blade, drawing it in a silver flash and holding it aloft. "Glory to the Warmaster!"
"Basek, any news?" Loken whispers into the too-quiet hallway.
The vox operator shakes his head once. "Negative. Auspex is out, too. We're going in blind."
"Garvi," Torgaddon counters, his voice an atypical rasp. "Got a bit of a chill there for a second. You know that feeling right before a bad drop?"
Loken snorts into the vox link, "Every time, Tarik."
"It's exactly like that," Torgaddon whispers, "but I swear I feel eyes on me."
And in truth, Loken felt it too. The sensation of a Remembrancer staring holes into the back of his battle plate, or a serf watching from a high gantry, but he knew they were being observed. It was there, like a buzzing energy that set him on edge. No, it was worse than that. He knew exactly what it felt like.
"Do you feel that, Vipus?"
Loken flexes his grasp on the chainsword's grip, brushing his thumb reflexively across the deactivate weapon's ignition stub. He'd turned it off to avoid its roar in an otherwise eerily quiet hallway. Even the insect-like buzzing of the powered armor's servos were nearly deafening in the oppressive stygian silence.
Vipus slowly nods, "I feel it, Garviel. It's like the Whisperhead."
Marr broke the silence of footfalls and inter-unit vox whispers that suddenly jumped and crackle with static, "What happened at the damned Whisperhead!?"
Nero Vipus grunts, swinging his head to stare at the irritated captain just two paces ahead of Loken, right in front of him, "Horus Swore us to se-"
"It's okay, Nero." Loken chimes in, still staring ahead at the black winding passageway flanked in ossuary bones embedded in the walls and ceilings. "He's one of us now. Just like Tarik."
He sighs and takes a long moment, drawing that rasping breath and leaving only the momentary thump of armored footfalls. "We found a fane beneath the mountain that those rebels had dug themselves into. By the time we got there, I'd sent Hellebore under sergeant Jubal up ahead. Something happened, he changed, something took control of him. He killed his squad... then seven more from Breakspur before we put him down."
The squad may have known and Vipus had been there, but the uneasiness hung on the air until it was broken by Torgaddon's staggered gasp. "Sacred oath Garvi, how did I not hear about this?"
"Horus." Loken snorts, "Or more likely Maloghurst convinced him... but Horus said for us not to report it. Not to make it official. Whatever was in the Whisperhead was dangerous enough to turn Jubal into something else."
Marr grumbles into the vox and kicks his shuffle into a run, "And we left two of our own back there with some creature who might be the same? Damn it, double the pace, get Horus, and get out!"
"It doesn't mean they're dead or turned, Captain Marr!" Vipus calls again, "Caphon and Larekkon were veterans, I'd have never sent them into something I didn't think they could handle. And they knew about Jubal and the Whisperhead, so they should expect it."
That got a bit of a glance as they squad passes through another long chamber, down among a tomb and towards a gently sloping downwards hall.
Tybalt Marr's redoubled pace carries him a little in front of the group, who lope to keep up. He almost spits into the vox, "Wonder what else we managed to mi-"
Loken catches the same sudden ping from his armor's preysense less than a heartbeat after Marr's. A shift of movement to his right, a glint of the helmet lenses reflection picked up off polished metal, then the unmistakable 'ping' of three friendly legionnaires in dull ceramite grey at the mouth of the hallway.
It reads simply 'XVII'.
All three stand just meters in front of them at the bottom of the drop as an unfamiliar voice calls.
"Cousins."
And that breath, just that single hesitation, unleashes the thunderstorm.
Bolters blaze in the darkness of the temple's undercroft, bathing it in blinding flashes. The screaming whine of warning sigils flash through helmet displays, and whip-cracks and hammering bangs of shattering ceramite fill the narrow hall.
All of their training, all of their experience, everything hammered home one fundamental truth: an astartes of any legion was still one of their own. Even through arguments, rivalry, or anger, they were still the same. Loken had known Erebus was involved, and that they had been fed into some Machiavellian machination. But from the first scent of something wrong at the Whisperheads, he had never quite expected this. Jubal wasn't a legionnaire anymore. He was a 'thing'. Hijacked. Possessed. Surely it was some alien cordyceps polyp that had changed the warrior. This wasn't the same. And as the Word Bearer's mask lights of muzzle flashes, Loken's mind pulls together the unthinkable: this wasn't a mistake.
This was betrayal.
Loken's hesitation lasts a tenth of a second before his hand moves. He snaps his pistol up to his waist to fire. But two bolts already had his number. The first impacts on his pauldron, turned away in a shower of yellow sparks. The second deflects off his bracer with a metallic ping and undulating scream before bursting against black stone with a concussive 'crack'.
The pistol roars, the shot missing its mark from the jarring bolt rounds. Red flashing icons down the left side of his prey-sense display is just as distracting as the gunfire.
The ungainly crash of armor on stone pulls him from the second-long fugue. He hears Marr howling his rage into the vox as the captain plunges forward into the maelstrom with Torgaddon at his side.
Loken catches sight of another figure to his left, spinning hard and firing point blank. The snub-nosed pistol bucks, reflecting light off dull black lenses.
The shots catch the figure high as it tries to duck back into cover behind a carved pillar. The round glances upwards from its cuirass, bouncing off the pauldron and into the ceiling while two follow up blasts snap in nearly the same instant. Blossoms of yellow spark and flecks of metal spall as the ceramite plates buckle.
The Word Bearer roars as Loken lunches forward and thumbs the activation stud on his chainsword, goading it to roaring life. That rushing leap carries him right to the figure, pauldron set down to slam into the legionnaire and shove him back. The impact flings the Word Bearer into the far wall, boltgun wedged between Loken and the Legionnaire's own chest. The warrior twists hard, collapsing sideways and bringing the bolter up sharply as he pulls the trigger.
Its bark is deafening, blasting apart Loken's polyn knee plate and sending scraps of ceramite skittering across the crypt floor.
The chainsword hacked sideways, metal teeth banging off the bolter casing and tossing the legionnaire's weapon to the side. The momentum carries Loken forward, collapsing against the fallen legionnaire and forcing the barely moving blade up and against the legionnaire's left forearm and cuirass. Loken's close enough to see the carved Colchisian script and XVII numeral on the legionnaire's helm.
Word Bearers, one of Erebus's personal contingent
He didn't need to think about it as the Word Bearer's hand lets go of the bolter grip and he clutched at the near-motionless chainsword grip to foul the teeth.
Loken guns the choke as the legionnaire's palm clasps the blade, and in a roaring whirl of monomolecular teeth and spatter of red, four fingers and the top hard of the legionnaire's hand fling across the floor. The chainsword carries in with a screaming scrape, juddering across the thick armoured cuirass until the teeth finally bite.
Despite a single punch in the face with the stub of his ruined hand, Loken's chainsword roars to life and rips deep in the marine's chest in a fountain of syrupy red blood. In a heartbeat, he's cut through to the spine as the blade is wrenched free.
"Captain!"
Kamphaddon's warning comes an instant too late. A sudden impact from behind slams Loken's helmet into the rock face, jarring him for a moment as he feels a sting in his upper back. Armour integrity icons flash warnings runes that he blink clicks away. Dragging in a breath was tough enough, pain balms dispensed to a yet-undiagnosed injury. Twisting into a crouch and bringing up his nearly spent bolt pistol, Loken spots another concealed Word Bearer.
Kamphaddon's pistol blazes, shattering the pillar that the Word Bearer was concealed behind. The Legionnaire angles himself against the shot, stepping out from hiding.
But there was no damage to Loken's arm or eyes as he lined up a shot on the figure. The pistol bucks, the racking slide locked back empty. The shot rings once, sending a screaming bolt past a kneeling Marcellus. The Word Bearer's head snaps back with a satisfying wet snap as the armourglas lens explodes in a gory pink mist.
His opponent collapses, but already Loken is up on a protesting knee and surging towards the sound of a screaming chainblade and snarl of legionnaire voices.
At the bottom of the rise, one Word Bearer was already laying headless on the floor, the helmet still rolling in an oblong circle pouring arterial blood. Marr's follow through swing carries the blade up and sideways to protect his face just as a flat burst of bolter fire pings off the energized Cthonic steel.
Two paces away, another pair wrestles for control. The Word Bearer had clamped a hand around Nero Vipus's throat as the veteran sergeant plunges his knife down and twists it between gorget plate and neck seal. The legionnaire grunts as he's slammed to the wall, spoiling another shot at Marr as the bolt gun flies from his grasp. The pair are sent skidding along the rockface in a grunting mass of protesting servos.
Torgaddon had the worst of it, his cratered cuirass smokes and winks as the shattered plate barely keeps his brutalized chest from pouring out. The fellow captain cackles, wet sloppy breaths coming from his lips as he took another burst of bolter fire from point blank range, only for his bolter's chainblade to slice upwards from his kneeling position, drawing across the third legionnaire's groin along the flex-steel mesh.
With a howl of rage, the weapon fires, detonating deep in the Word Bearers stomach and blasting out the power cabling beneath the central plackart. The Colchisian clutches his stomach as Torgaddon's armoured fist slams into the inside of his knee, toppling him sideways and crashing into Marr's thigh.
Marr grunts and whirls on his opponent, driving his longblade down and next to the pauldron, sending the blade hissing through the legionnaire's torso and out from underneath his arm to pin him to the floor. The Word Bearer turns his bolter, trying to angle it up and under Marr's chin. Torgaddon's shot from two feet away ricochets a bolt up from the armour's gorget, under his chin, and into the helmet with a muffle thump.
Aside from a few growling breaths as Vipus saws his combat knife back and forth, the catacombs plunges back into silence.
"Status?" Loken growls, blood bubbling up in his lungs as draws in a wet breath. Only then can he feel the sting in his back, figuring a lung had collapsed and hoping that was the worst of it.
Vipus wrenches the word bearer's helmet off in a savage snarl of rage and slams the meter long blade through the legionnaire's temple, splitting it wide open. "For Basek, you motherless vat-grown bastard!" Vipus growls and pulls away.
Loken let the pain balms heady neurotoxin blunt the radiating pain in his chest, but looks around the smoking chamber where vaporized ceramite, blood, and bolter discharge wafts down in clouds of powdered stone. But he meanders, sweeping the ground to spot any of his other legionnaire's, though the squad-link painted a grim picture in steady red and blinking orange glyphs.
Basek lay torn open a few feet in front of him, a blackened twisted mass of shattered green armour punctured and bulging at the sides where armour piercing shells had detonated and scrambled his innards.
Setar was on one knee, covering their rear with a smoking bolter held in one hand, his other ruined appendage propping up the front.
Marcellus clutches his chest as he slowly rises to his feet, all the while muttering, "Fine. Just fine. Got a little winded..." and coughs wetly into his helmet. The echo of Loken's own voice might have sounded mocking if it weren't so perfectly in line with his own injuries.
Kamphaddon fires a last shot into the Word Bearer that he and Loken had dispatched.
"Tarik? Marr?" Loken calls.
"I'm fine, Loken." Marr snarls, still peering out ever deeper into the gloom, though the scrape of silver across his helmet could be readily seen.
Torgaddon wetly chortles, "Fine here. Damned sloppy work, Lorgar's worthless runts couldn't... couldn't even kill me when they got the jump on us." he pulls himself up to standing but keeps a hand clutched to his chest. The blood still seeps from between his fingers as massive gouges spew thick streams.
"I wouldn't say that." Vipus growls and swiftly plucks the bolter from the Word Bearers dead hands. Dropping to one knee, he nods into the dark hallway. "Hear that?"
Marr growls as the sound reaches even Loken's ears, now that he was aware of it. In the distance was chanting, a dozen voices meld into a layered monotone hymn. A dozen. They'd barely come out on top of five, now there was more than twice that number. But the arithmetic of war was cold and clear cut: they were combat ineffective.
"More of 'em headed our way." Vipus seethes with a malign growl. Taking the corpse of the Word Bearer, he props it up in front of him as an impromptu shield.
"Strip them of arms," Loken calls back to the rest of the squad, getting vox-clicked acknowledgements. "Make every bolt and every grenade count."
"Luna, Luna! Come back!" Starlight calls into the void. They'd gotten closer, the shimmer glinting through the darkness appearing like a distant lighthouse.
Shades loom through the spiraling red-hazed darkness. Horns and sickly limbs, mutating shadows and grating screams mix with the howl of the ever present wind threatening to swallow them all up. But through the pall of black and scarlet, all three ponies spot the dark outline and unnerving halo of false light around the Alicorn. And just beyond her, the monster.
The Lurker, Kanathara.
She towers over Luna, easily four times her size. The creature sways in a way that betrayed the absence of joints and bones that should be there. Two enormous scythe like claws protruded two and a half meters long each, and a staff floating in easy reach curved into a sickle bladed glaive every bit the size and lethality of Ceifador.
"My my, little Luna. It's seemed like an age." The sinister feminine lilt whispers through the haze only to be answered by Luna's vicious bellow of rage.
The Alicorn darts forward with the speed of a lightning bolt, swiping the blade across to disembowel her opponent, only to find the dark spirit had taken a pace back and thrust down with her own glaive to lock the two polearms together.
She tuts, a scything limb reaching forward and warding Luna back. "Not the most formal, perhaps something changed?"
Twilight and Starlight gallop forward with Sunset silently following in their wake. She was whispering something, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. But her own movements were mechanical, stiff, awkward. Twilight careens through the barrier into the 'ring' around Luna and the Lurker, stopping in a skidding halt as Sunset barrels into her and flattens them both.
With a cough, Twilight can only look down, then realize there is a floor. It's a rich puce marble streaked with swirls of deepest azure. Twilight's eyes rise as the sickly feeling of familiarity descends upon her.
"Twilight." Starlight whispers, but by then they were staring at the onyx furnishings an elegant accouterments of Luna's own bedchambers. Soft sapphire light diffuses from tall standing candelabras in the rooms recesses, and the soft breath of wind gusts in from open windows.
The Alicorn stands with her back to the windows while Kanathara merely edges back, a smirk plastered on her bovine muzzle. The creature's laugh echoes in the same star-spanning roll just like before. "Is this a little better? I was growing a bit tired of Erebus's idea of luxury-"
"Be silent, spirit!" Luna bellows, darting in again, thrusting the halberd and loosing a blast of magic from her horn.
Kanathara parries the blade and vaults aside. She leaps across the room in a somersault and rights herself on scraping hooves with no trace of effort.
"What? Don't you like it? Are you so set to shed blood here in your own bedchambers? But that would be a first, would it not?" The creature's smile widening as a slender black forked tongue flicks between narrow lips.
Luna's face twists into a mask of hatred. She bites her tongue to stymie her building, "You dare mock me with something so debased?!"
"Merely a reminder, little princess." Kanathara flicks her glaive in an arc that sounds an eerie dirge as it slices through the air.
Luna's face screws up in a twitch, and between another blazing beam of stark moonlight, the creature was darting towards the balcony nearly as fast as the eye could see. With a mirthless laugh, Luna's dark blue magic grasped candelabras and furnishings, flinging them at the creature with unerring precision.
Kanathara slips and dives, using all of her limbs to propel her forward in unequine, impossible jinks and contorting spins as she slips from the room. Her mocking cackle echoes as she crosses to the balcony, Luna grasps a pair of window poles, stripping them of their drapes and hurtling them like spears. Both are neatly sliced in half in a delicate figure eight of Kanathara's glaive as she hops up onto the railing of Luna's room.
"I rather like your city. Sure, it's a little small, but there's so much to see. Maybe I'll stop by and see the real thi-"
She's interrupted by a blazing vortex of magic from Twilight's horn. And for a fleeting second, the spirit's lips peel back in a fanged snarl as drops from the balcony into the yawning abyss leaving a blackened scar behind.
Something sizzles as the wide black scorch mark burnt across the marble floor had gouged out a considerable chunk of the balcony. Twilight lay at the foot of Luna's bed, panting as her horn's glow subsides.
"Princess... Luna." Twilight swallows hard and stands.
"Are you okay?" Starlight picks up where Twilight left off. Looking back and forth, the Unicorn nods at Sunset who staggers to her feet, still shaking with the sight of the room in ruins around them.
"I'm fine." Luna growls. "Come now, she can't have gone far."
Starlight lofts a brow but slides to a stop next to the princesse. "You sure, because I think a dark spirit just jumped out the window after taunting you. Not to mention your wing's-"
"I said I'm fi-"
"No you aren't!" Starlight cries and circles around to face the princess eye to eye "You're hurt, you can't fly and you want to jump off a balcony! You ran off ahead and now we're... here." she gestures around, "Stuck in here with another spirit in their own little world. You have to let us help, and we have to work together!" The Unicorn reaches forward to lay a hoof on the princesses chest, "Please, your highness?"
Starlight's question rings in the dark, and the princess breaks eye contact first. But she brushes past the Unicorn who staggers back only for the larger Alicorn to focus on something laying near the charred and smoking balcony edge.
With hum of arcane magic, she levitates the object over to her. It was bent, dogged, blackened and oozing smoke. With every second that passes, more of the object flecks away to ash. "You see this, Starlight glimmer?"
"By Celestia," Twilight gasps and cranes her head forward, "I-is that-"
"An arm." Sunset's whisper breaks the silence.
Luna nods once and with a flex of magic, bursts the limb into a puff of dust that drifts off into the breeze. With a sigh, she looks outside and over the landscape of a quiet Canterlot night. But the lanterns were more interestingly coloured, the streets positively alive like mid-day, ponies and... other things, coming and going as they pleased in the silent world below.
All at once, the heady ring of musical instruments rings from the castle's lower chambers.
"So, what do we do now?" Starlight asks with a warble of apprehension, quickly glancing between the trio of ponies.
"At the center of each of these was some foci," Luna starts, only for Twilight to nod and eagerly explain.
"If we can determine exactly where the magical focus originates from and destroy it, then we can get out of here. Then we can help your friend."
"We help Horus, then we find Erebus-" Luna's muzzle twitches, "And obliterate him."
In the hallway outside the room, the sound of howling screeches emerges from the musical cacophony.
"Hold fast..." Luna growls and sets her stance wide. But all three ponies catch the mirthless grin that worms its way across Luna's muzzle, "They're coming."
