Tales of the Amber Vipers Chapter 334
Skoll flew backwards as a clawed hand smashed him away. His armour's spirit wailed at the damage, deep furrows in his breastplate sparking as shorn cables spat randomly. His Black carapace was cracked and he was sure several ribs had shattered. The world was dim and growing darker, perhaps the final extinction of death had found him. He was remarkably sangfroid about the idea, death had swallowed most of the galaxy, surely it would notice the crumbs left on the table sooner rather than later. The pain in his chest told a different tale, a hot pulse of fire wrapping around his lungs, the kind of pain only life could bestow.
Skoll found himself laying in a shallow crater, carved by the force of his landing. The darkness was from the fight raging all around, bulky outlines cutting off the sky. Boots crashed into his sides, battering him from side to side, while clawed toes racked his flanks. Bodies were falling in pieces, dripping wet blood onto the stone, all of them notably Vanagandyr. It seemed the fight was not going his way.
Skoll forced his head up and found the melee pressing in from all sides. The Infernae were reaping lives like a threshing machine does wheat, long talons dissecting bodies like an autopsy played out in fast-forward. Their reach was great and their claws sharp, and in their eyes dwelled nothing but rage and thirst, without any hint of human comprehension. Taller than the feral packmates Skoll commanded, stick-thin and pale, their forms seemed laughably slight, far too easily broken, but their speed was beyond comprehension. When they moved they seemed to flicker from place to place without crossing the distance between, jolting from stance to stance and with every blink their talons took a life.
Skoll had faced these deviants before, and knew their nature. The poisoned fruit of Sanguinius' bloodline, the final form of the curse that haunted his children. In the Before Times the Vlka Fenryka had pretended not to know of their cousin's curse, so similar to their own gene-flaw and yet so different. There had been a tragic nobility in the Baalite's resistance to their doom. The Blood Talons could not claim such a thing, their gene-father's legacy lay heavy upon them from first implantation. In youth they were beautiful and proud, barely suffering a hint of rage, but as time passed their corruption grew. Barely a century of life saw them devolve into these freaks, no matter how proud or strong of will, their doom was certain.
Skoll rose to his feet, lips drawing back over his fangs. In his hands Solulv and Solvarg fumed, Maleficarum growing stronger as the death toll rose. The beast within strained at the leash, yearning to be set free. The wolf spirit of Russ was no tame thing, it reacted to the deviant's presence the only way it could, in a challenge for dominance.
"Gnarrgh!" Skoll roared as his bestial anima took hold. He hurled himself at a whirling freak, twin axes lashing for a hunched spine. The twisted malform heard him coming. One instant its back was to him, the next it was facing him, and a black claw was coming for his face. Skoll's awareness was hyper-keen, his ferocity that of the wolf, and he redoubled his speed to the utmost. He threw himself at the creature, suffering a vicious slice to the cheek as his axe blade lashed for a stretched thigh bone. He missed, for the freak was no longer there.
A sound of tearing armour, a lance of pain to the hip and Skoll staggered, bleeding from a terrible wound. Agony in his bones, a cold chill to the side, the wound was deep but the wolf within was not defeated. He spun about only to find his rival standing inhumanly still in the melee, watching him with black eyes. Skoll's axes came up, but too slow. An impact struck him in the gut, twin lines of fire describing the tears to his belly. A second later the sound of motion reached him, air booming as the filth tore through it, the creature's blow arriving before the sound of its passing reached his ears.
Skoll staggered back as the red mist tried to overwhelm him. The wolf wanted to rend and slay, to sink fangs into the challenger's chest and devour the still-beating hearts. Skoll resisted, monster to monster this fight had only one possible outcome, but he was more than a mad berserker. The Vlka Fenryka were more than blood-seeking savages, they were cunning too.
Skoll hurled Solulv at the freak, leaving a trail of ice in the air. The deviant dodged with ease, grinning around needle-fangs as the axe flew away. Skoll brandished Solvarg in threat and the freak hissed in anticipation of the bloodletting to come. It would rip out his throat and drink deep of the vitae within, draining him dry of every last drop. The damned creature knew it would win, so it was surprised when Solulv came spinning out of nowhere and drove deep into its back.
The deviant threw its arms wide, as icy-hoarfrost spread across its chest. Limbs shook as they crusted over, membranes between arm and chest growing brittle and shattering, the jaw yawning wide as the cold of the void raced up its throat. It was dying under the touch of the Underverse but Skoll wasn't going to permit so quick a death. He bounded up and placed Solvarg to its neck. The deviant could only stare with incomprehension, but it knew it when the Jarl slit its throat and hissed his condemnation, "Vampyre!"
Skoll retrieved his weapon and looked about. On all sides the battle raged, Vanagandyr were falling in chunks of steaming meat, culled by freaks who outmatched them in every way. Vlka Fenryka were among them, less in number but equally outmatched. Young bravados were found wanting alongside hoary sons of Fenris, each thread cut taking away a memory of the bones of dead Fenris. The Infernae reaped lives at will and there were only a dozen of them, set against hundreds.
Skoll saw Jotnyr fighting a deviant, using the booming aura of his Crozius to fend it off. He was hard-pressed to stay alive, but was aided by Draugr. The Skinwalker clung to the freak's back, his claws sunk deep into its shoulders. His maw was set to the neck of the malform, gnawing and ripping away chunks of flesh with every bite. The deviant didn't seem to notice, blind to pain and continued its rampage regardless.
The beast within was howling but Skoll held firm. He'd faced these things before and knew what must be done. "Gathor!" he bellowed and a heavy growl answered. Over the fight a shadow loomed, taller even than the Infernae. Sheets of metal moved against each other as legs like tree trunks lumbered forward. Colossal boots dug into the ferrocrete, mutated talons breaking through Ceramite in a twisted fusion of flesh and metal. Wolf fetishes hung in rows and marks of Aversion had been drawn repeatedly, not to keep Maleficarum away but to keep it in. A chest so broad as to make arms and head look stumpy, pauldrons so high as to nearly touch above the body. The thickest armour a man could wear, slow to be sure, but utterly unbreakable. Not just a Terminator, but the oldest model of Terminator, a Saturnine.
"Make way for the Hammerhand!" Gathor snarled as he planted his feet. Arms shrugged and fleshmetal flowed, forming multiple barrels that spun into blurs. Skoll threw himself aside as the Saturnine let rip with twin assault cannons, spewing spent casings to the ground as bullets scythed into the melee. Gathor fired blind, uncaring what he hit as the yammering roar of gunfire split the air. He swept his arms about and a hail of rounds sawed into the packed masses, making blood fountain like a firehose. Ceramite cracked here and there but hairy beasts took the brunt, hot lead punching into Vanagandyr without a care. Infernae too were hit, a few, but Skoll would trade a hundred of his pets for one of those freaks. Thin limbs and pale skin proved no protection and where hit they suffered terrible wounds.
One of the Infernae came out of nowhere, appearing like smoke on Gathor's flank. The Saturnine could not possibly dodge, too heavy and cumbersome, and a talon racked his flank before he could react. Armour tore but only shallowly, the multiple layers of bonded Adamantium invulnerable to practically anything. The Saturnine pattern had been deemed too torpid for the fast-paced Legionnaires Astartes, but what it lacked in speed it made up for in indomitability, casting other marks of Terminators into shame.
Gathor's hand came up and fleshmetal flowed. Where once there was a gun now rose a Heavy flamer, and he presented it to the stunned Infernae and doused it in fiery death. The fiend went up like a candle, covered in flames as it fell to the ground thrashing. Gathor let it drop unremarked, turning his other hand on the crowd, spewing flames over friend and enemy alike.
Skoll wasn't watching. With the moment of respite he called to his packs, drawing them from the fight. The Vlka Fenyrka abandoned their lesser kin to die, the Vanagndyr left to be clawed, shot and burned to death. Skoll cared nothing for their losses as he formed his packs into long firing lines, bolters held ready. A few seconds was all they needed, then his snarled command saw them open fire.
Into the melee they blazed, a torrent of mass-reactives decimating all they saw. Vanagandyr fell to the treacherous ire of their masters, but their lives were forfeit anyway. More important the deviants with them were pinned, and unable to dodge. Bolt rounds struck pallid flesh and burst it apart, shattering bones and opening chests. Skoll snarled as they fell one by one, cut apart by a vicious hail of death. Few things brought him joy, but death unleashed stirred the ashen embers of his hearts.
He kept his packs firing till magazines ran dry, then finally allowed them to stop. Before him a field of red meat stretched, the steaming offal of his pets and the freaks mixing at his feet. He could not tell what was his side's and what was the other's, so thoroughly were they reduced. From the outskirts more Vanagndyr came, drawn by the smell but Draugyr beat them to it, burying his snout in the wet feast and gulping down gobbets of meat.
Jotnyr limped over, bearing terrible wounds, "I hate those things."
"They fight well," Skoll allowed, "Worthy of walking the road to hell with."
"Don't cry little pups," Gathor chuckled, "I'll be here to save the day, as the heroes of sagas always do."
Jotnyr hissed, "They bought the whelps time to escape."
"Not quite," Skoll growled.
In the distance retreating dots rose into the sky, the fleeing gunships of the runts. They thought themselves safely away, but Skoll had other ideas. He sighted a Stormraven climbing for all it was worth and drew back his arm. A flash of the hand and Solvarg flew after, trailing lightning in its wake. The dot was barely visible, but Skoll's eyes never wavered. He tracked it climbing ever higher, till the moment it blew apart in mid-air. A blazing fireball and plummeting wings that was all that remained of the craft, as Solvarg flew back to his hand.
Gathor rumbled, "Good throw."
Skoll gripped the axe tight, "I don't know why we feared Maleficarum, it has its uses."
"More than you know," Jotnyr chuckled, "I saw that one pick up one of their gene-seed conveyers. You just took out a sizeable chunk of their stockpile."
"Good," Skoll growled, "They'll die out that much sooner after this."
Gathor lumbered about, "So, what now?"
Skoll grunted, "This planet is dead, time to move on. Signal all packs to grab as many warm bodies as they can then fly to orbit before the ash-cloud cuts us off. Anyone left here will die, if they desire to live they must join the Vanagandyr. Our murder-make is ended, it's time to replenish the ranks."