Chapter three (and it's a doozy...). This is the most ambitous of my works and hope it isn't too boring. Again it doesn't gel with the last chapter, but that was my intent. This thing took a lot of effort to produce and I actually care if I can get reviews off of this. Read, hopefully enjoy and review if you fit. Thank you for your time. Disclaimer still at the end...
The Rending of a Veil
Mikaihel, Dark Apostle and Daemon Prince of the Word Bearers chaos space marine legion, parried a chainsword blow with his curved secondary weapon while tearing a gaping wound in the assault marine's chest with the Accursed Crozius in his left. A powerfist blow was halted by an eruption of white sparks as it struck at the daemon prince's rear. The force of the blow sent Mikaihel plummeting towards the earth, before he powered upward with a sudden pumping of his wings. The ebon clad Black Templar assault marines scattered before his rush, regrouping above, below, and around him in an effort to cut the white robed Word Bearer down. Mikaihel swung with his barbed Crozius to his right, deftly thrusting his other blade past a Black Templar's shield and through his chest. The marine dropped as a glancing strike from below tore through Mikaihel's robe. A second chainsword strike glanced off the wings releasing thin droplets of blood from the resultant rents in the adamine pinions. The Dark Apostle quickly suppressed his grimace of pain as he initiated a series of dives, climbs and aerial dashes in an effort to spread out his assailants. The Black Templar pursued, their righteous fury goading them onward. Their jump packs flared like miniature suns as they dueled with Mikaihel in groups of two. The Dark Apostle's blows were often as not deflected by the glowing shields of his loyalist opponents. Mikaihel whispered litanies of endurance as the tactical indoctrination of his ancient youth analyzed the danger of his situation. One of his powerfist wielding opponents dived at him from above. The Dark Apostle's wing seized up as one of his fractured pinions jammed against another robbing him of his ability to dodge as the loyalist struck.
The crackling powerfist disintegrated Mikaihel's shoulder and most of his right wing. The daemon prince was sent plummeting towards the ground, his robes flailing in sympathetic distress with his pain. The Dark Apostle was silent as he fell, clutching his Crozius as he hit the ground with bone crushing force. The Black Templar followed him to the ground, their jump packs bathing the earth with flame as they touched down. The squad surrounded the horribly wounded figure and surveyed it in silence. The squad leader advanced on Mikaihel his power sword humming as he raised it for the death blow. His look of contempt turned to one of anger as he saw the lack of fear in the daemon prince's eyes. He lashed out with his blade as the Dark Apostle whispered, "A daemon need not fear oblivion...". The fallen figure began to dissolve even as it stilled.
The warp is a howling maelstrom of insanity. A cacophony of voices calls out at once in a million languages for every thing and anything. This place is the true home of all daemonkind. They ventured into the hostile banquet that is the material universe whenever possible and inevitably returned here when they were over come by the constraints of physics. Here daemons pounce on newly released souls and each other. An incoming daemon, replete with the sensations and pleasures of the material universe, was particularly vulnerable to such attack. The weakened entity would be set upon by a multitude of its peers, each eager to share in the memories. They couldn't truly hurt one another here in their native realm but they could tear apart the minds of their peers in a mindless desire for sustenance. The shattered victims would recover and grow to hunger experience again as they mended their psyches and readied themselves for the maniac feeding frenzy that marked daemonic intrusions into real space thus starting the cycle anew, time after time.
Mikaihel had become adept at enduring the transition to warp space. When he first ascended to daemonhood he had been shielded by the chaos gods themselves. When that protection had been withdrawn he had relied on a complex mantra of faith to filter out the insanity, but even the most devout prayer could be disrupted... Ultimately the best solution to the problem was to place a wall of silence around his mind that no daemon could pierce. In this condition, Mikaihel entered a state that was as much like sleep as he could still achieve and all minds, human, xeno, or daemon, dream in their sleep of a past their waking minds have forgotten.
On the hiveworld of Midgar, six millennia ago... Captain Sain Gaisis of the Midgar Planetary Defense Force felt like collapsing in tears where he stood. He was exhausted and numbed by the horrors he had witnessed. His unit had been sent into the underhive on a routine mission to curb excess gang violence that was influencing hive production values. It had started normally enough, picking off the odd underhiver while moving towards the local gang stronghold. His squads had taken position around the squalid fortress when it all went wrong.
Cloak clad gangers had boiled out of the darkness around them in an endless tide as a larger figure in blue armor directed the attack from the shadows at the rear of his force. Sain's soldiers had fought well, gunning down wave after wave of them with volleys of lasfire. When clumps of gangers managed to close with their ranks, the flare of flamers and the cough of shotguns drove them off. The central mass of the enemy had entered optimal weapons range when a mind bending blast of light temporarily illuminated the dank shadows of the decaying battlefield. Glowing shifting horrors, dripping fire from every orifice now led the attacking mob. They surged forward and a wave of flame burst from them to engulf his nearest troopers. The effects of the blast left him gaping in horror at the pathetic victims. The lucky ones were burned to the bone and lay dead. Others were horribly mutated, eyes, mouths and tendrils sprouting from every surface leaving them twitching in agony as they stilled one by one. Hardening his resolve, he led his command squad forward in time to assault the protean horrors. The creatures were strong but slow and clumsy. They seemed unable to direct their own flailing attacks and failed to dodge blows directed at them. Gaisis' shotgun, wielded like a club, bruised and burst their flesh with every strike. Those creatures not wounded in combat faded into the empty air, seeming to burn away among their own flames. When the last of the creatures were gone the ganger attack lost momentum. The looming blue armored figure moved away amid the shadows. The enemy broke away in driblets and PDF fire soon put paid to those inclined to fight. The attack was over.
The return uphive was quiet. Gaisis and his men were unwilling to speak to each other as they watched for any sign of their foes returning. Once they cleared the underhive sectors and were moving back to the security checkpoint, their spirits lifted with the thought of joining their loved ones again. The presence of massed chimeras, their weapons trained on his depleted force, raised Sain's ire and he gestured to his command quad that he was going forward to deal with the situation. Leaving his weapons behind, he marched up to the lead soldiers and held his hands where they could be clearly seen before he started to speak, "I am PDF Captain Gaisis, ID number – 1103-0998, returning from an underhive strike and request to know why my troops and I are receiving such... forceful attention."
"Orders from above, Captain, orders from above. Hive central command to be precise." The speaker stepped clear from the mass of troops surrounding Gaisis and Gaisis couldn't help but feel intimidated by the stylized 'I' engraved on the figure's heavy red suit of carapace armor. The speaker stood confidently, hands on the holster of his twin hellpistols. "I am lieutenant Crasis of the fifth stormtrooper regiment and I have orders regarding you and troops." Stormtroopers armed with longer, heavier hellguns pushed their way to the front of the crowd as he spoke. "Under the authority of Hive central command and the Ordos Hereticus of the Inquisition, you and your men are to be taken into custody and isolated until such time as your spiritual purity can be determined." Sain Gaisis was horrified and couldn't speak. They had been given the equivalent of a death sentence. Any resistance on their part would be suicidal and would probably lead to the torment of their families if they weren't already being targeted. Sain forcibly controlled his voice as he turned his face towards Crasis again. "Understood. My soldiers will stand down and let themselves be taken into custody as befits loyal subjects of the Emperor." Crasis grinned nastily at the word loyal and responded, "I expected nothing less."
Some hours later, after being transferred to a vessel in orbit around Midgar, Sain was strapped to a bare metal table stripped to the waist. The chamber was a spartan questioning chamber complete with implements of torture. The tools were still wrapped as Sain willingly and completely told his story to the three other occupants of the room. One was a thin adept in the robes and characteristic augmentations of the Mechticanous. Another crouched in one of the corners, a look of madness rolling across her perfect features as she grinned and twitched in the corner. The last and most impressive was Inquisitor Macberius, tall and heavily armored, a man with the cold countenance of a hawk. He was stoic as Sain repeated the story of what happened for the third time. "Have you got that down Fecalculus?" "Every word, my lord." responded the adept. "And was it different from last time?" "There were differences present, but they can be attributed to the effects of fear on the subject's mind." The adept sent a look of contempt Sain's way as he finished, "It is my conjecture that he thinks of this as the whole truth of the matter." "Rachael, what is your take on this?" The crouched figure seemed to struggle to focus for a moment before she answered, "He speaks a truth, but the truth is meaningless when the Writhing Serpent of Fate has a hand in the game. His roving eye is fixed upon this world and he plays his games with his human puppets. Heeee ah ha ha ha ha..." Rachael dissolved into laughter as her eyes rolled into her head. The inquisitor studiously ignored his minion's hysterics as he considered the message she delivered. Long minutes passed this way in silence, Sain Gaisis growing increasingly alarmed yet not daring to speak or draw more attention to himself. Then a cold smile lit up Macberius' brooding face and Rachael laughed in a way that made Sain break out in a cold sweat.
The convoy of vehicles rumbled their way across the broken fields, following the direction in which their Dark Apostle had been driven by his Black Templar attackers. The crimson hulls of the vehicles proclaimed their allegiance to the monastic Word Bearers' chaos space marine legion. The ornate spike encrusted rhinos at the core of the column were surrounded by ramshackle trucks filled with devout cultists and acolytes. In the lead rhino, a chaos marine with bandaged eyes scanned the landscape with warp- spawned senses other than sight.
In the mist shrouded vision of the lookout, a sudden gleam of balefire caused him to excitedly vox the leader of the convoy. The group of vehicles turned toward the sighting hastily, cult trucks speeding up to surround the target. When the chaos marines disembarked from their rhinos within the parameter formed by their support troops, the spotter moved to a slowly bubbling pool of mud. Quickly he scoped the hot mud away to reveal the form of Mikaihel's Accursed Crozius. It was worse for wear, the damage done to it by the Black Templar clearly visible. Careful not to touch the barbed weapon, the marine stepped back as one of the daemon prince's chief lieutenants stepped forward bearing a baroque case on his back.
Unhitching the case, he took out two pairs of tongs and lifted the lid. He then delicately lifted up the daemon weapon of his lord with them and placed it inside. He silently sealed it and then all present knelt and quickly prayed before they remounted their vehicles and headed back to the Word Bearer encampment.
Sain Gaisis sat alone in his cell, the gloom of the chamber lit only by a failing glow strip. His body shook with exhaustion yet he could not sleep. The inquisitor had ordered him taken here shortly after finishing his questioning. The thought of being tortured or worse yet, being touched by that demented psyker witch of his had made him tell every thing about the encounter with the gangers in the underhive. Despite the fact that he told the truth, he couldn't help but shudder at the way Macberius' eyes had narrowed as he described the eldritch horrors that had attacked them and the hulking armored figure who had directed the assault. Gaisis could but pray to the Emperor that he and his men would be released and returned to their homes, if they had homes left.
Finally closing his eyes after staring at the wall for hours, Gaisis was awakened as a red armored guard stormed into the cell and forced him to his feet. He was pushed along the corridor with others of his command as they too were driven out of their cells. Finally, they were forced into a large theater like chamber replete with icons of inquisition and a raised balcony which overlooked the expansive room. Inquisitor Macberius stood on that balcony, his cold eyes skimming over the crowd of PDF troops. He smiled thinly before beginning, "As most of you know by now, I am a representative of his most holy Emperor's inquisition. This meaning what it does, requires that I take measures to safeguard his realm. That which you encountered in the 'underhive' is one of the greatest threats we face and necessitates the most dire of measures."
The inquisitor's voice became even colder as looks of dismay began to filter through his captive audience. "There can be no mercy towards this threat and any sacrifice is warranted as we oppose it. This great enemy has filtered its way onto your world and into the deepest roots of your hives. Those you slew were merely the foremost tendril of a great contagion which will turn your entire world into a monument to desecration. They were not mere 'rebellious gangers and mutants', they were pawns to the eternal foes of mankind: the False Deities of Chaos. To rid the universe of such a foul rot, I have sanctioned the most drastic of measures: Exterminatus for your world! It is better to lose a thousand worlds to destruction than to allow one follower of chaos to survive and prosper!" Now Gaisis and his troops shouted in horror and realization, horror at the death sentence of their world and the realization that they had faced the dreaded chaos bogeymen that filled the dark whispers of even the upperhive. Macberius sounded sad as he spoke again over the stunned murmuring of the crowd, "You are among those to contact this plague and emerge seemingly unblemished. I fear however, that the insidious threads of Chaos work their way through your souls even as we speak. To face Chaos without foreknowledge and forewarning is to be inevitably corrupted. As you are yet good faithful men of the Emperor, I give you the next several hours to seek His mercy as I begin the purification of your world. You will then be killed to save us all from abomination." As the men around him cried out in fear and anger, Sain Gaisis became silent as anger froze on his face under a mask of rigid control. The mask didn't shift even as the inquisitor's red clad troopers moved to subdue the unruly PDF soldiers. He glanced at Macberius' armored back as the inquisitor left the balcony via a shadowed corridor. Sain's former soldiers were forcibly calmed by the blows of clubs and hellgun butts.
The encampment hummed with activity as acolytes and initiates hurried to finish the ritual's preparations before the Word Bearer chaos marines finished their private rites. A large pentagram was carved on the ground in the central plaza, delineated in rich black paint. Torches marked each corner of the shape, their fey lights illuminating the gathering dusk and casting weird shadows on the walls as the acolytes carried out their tasks.
Dusk faded into night and all was in readiness. Chaos marines knelt nearest the sigil with the acolytes forming a crowd around their masters. Outside the encampment walls, vast mobs of mutants chanted and screeched their prayers to the skies. In the encampment itself though, silence fell as a procession of Chosen chaos space marines emerged from the chaos cathedral at the heart of the camp. These veterans, the most high of the Host, followed Mikaihel's chief lieutenant through the parting crowd toward the pentagram. The twin lines of Chosen split up to surround the immense sigil and revealed the near naked figure of an initiate, his body marked with deeply carved tattoos that wept blood and ink. He step forward and knelt before the lieutenant who shifted the case containing the Dark Apostle's Accursed Crozius to the ground. The initiate tremblingly grasped the weapon and struggled not to scream as the daemon bound inside the weapon racked the initiate's body with pain and the ebony of the weapon's haft merged with his skin and absorbed his fingers. The Chosen stepped forward and tossed their smoking censors into the pentagram. Immediately, a dome of gray smoke formed atop the pentagram. With this done the initiate strode into the arcane mist, his eyes tearing in pain as he faded from sight amid the warp laden fumes.
Gaisis sat in his darkened cell, his mind a swirl of doubt and rage. He refused to let himself break down into tears even as another rumble shock the black ship. He could only imagine the world killing ordinance falling from this vessel's guts like arsenic laced rain towards his world. He had prayed to the Emperor, zealously at firs, to intervene and save his home from the sadistic maniac that claimed to speak in His name. Sain's prayers were disrupted by his discordant thoughts. He could not believe that Midgar was doomed by the simple presence of the followers of chaos. His men had cut down four times their number with only twenty percent casualties. Surely the followers of chaos could be stopped without killing his entire world! Sain's prayers had faltered and stopped as the rumbles continued apace without slowing.
The realization that his world was dying below him finally broke through his shell of control and brought a cry of fury to his lips. He lashed out at the wall with his fist, only to cradle his injured hands moments after it rebounded from the metal surface. Despair replaced anger and he held his head in his hand as yet another rumble passed through the ship. He was helpless to save his world, his men, or even himself. There was no one and nothing that would stop the inquisitor from extinguishing his homeworld on a whim. On this thought, Sain Gaisis fell into a black sleep that promised only bad dreams.
A noise awoke Sain from his troubled sleep, hours or minutes later he couldn't tell, a noise different from the now silent rumble that had been permeating the black ship. It came again, a distant clang followed by a tearing sound like chainsaws riping through metal. The sound came again and again, Gaisis only able to guess at the source. The chattering of small arms fire in the outside corridor followed by the dull boom of some heavier weapon firing back informed Gaisis of a firefight. The curses of humans was drowned out by the buzz of chain swords and a monotone chanting that somehow twisted at his' brain with their alien sounding syllables. Shortly, silence fell in the outside corridor and he was left to wonder at the turn of event.
Much later, Sain Gaisis was awakened as his cell door opened and a deep loud voice curtly ordered, "Get up. You are to come with me by the Dark Apostle's will." Too shaken to disobey, Gaisis paused in shock at what he saw in the outer corridor. The floors were stained with blood and the scars of weapon impacts were scattered about the walls. His troopers stood dazedly in the corridor, but his gaze was drawn to the looming figure that bulked over them all. Its baroque red armor was severe looking and covered in yellow stained purity seals. It carried a massive chainsword in a sheath and a bolt pistol in its right hand. Its apparently sunken head in a studded helmet looked over the gawking crowd of humans before it. "Get moving, we have to meet the blessed one soon." Unwilling to further irritate the massive figure, Gaisis moved with the rest of the troopers toward the theater-like chamber where the inquisitor had addressed them before.
Something clicked in his mind as Sain's eyes swept over the stained glass window that rose from the floor to the ceiling. The glass bore a vivid rendering of the Emperor triumphant, but it was the figures clustered below that golden image that drew his eye. Space marines! The Angels of Death! His distracted mind called up a dozen points of trivia and rumor about the legendary Adeptus Astartes, none of it particularly helpful or insightful. Clearing his thoughts, Gaisis focused on the situation at hand. Their rescuers must be space marines. Their size and armor proclaimed their nature even though some of the iconography seemed odd...
It was at this point that a low clear voice disturbed Sain's thought and drew every eye in the room to itself. The marines knelt in a whir of hydraulics all around the room as an imposing figure stepped to the edge of a speaking platform. He wore no helmet allowing one to see his features. His eyes were clear in a weathered broad face. His armor was covered in tiny lines of text inscribed in a fine flowing style that made it impossible to read from a distance. He was no taller than the rest of the marines yet drew every gaze as he spoke again, "Men of Midgar! I am the Dark Apostle Pontirus and I bring you liberation! Not just mere liberation from the threat of death and destruction posed by a mad inquisitor, but liberation from a false faith to a weakling god who lead mankind to destruction." A murmur ran through the crowd of PDF troopers around Gaisis as the more ardent believers of the imperial cult voiced their dismay at this statement.
The Dark Apostle continued, silencing the dissenters with a look, "Is this not so? This inquisitor was allowed to proceed unchecked, unleashing his wrath on your world because he could not save the wheat while disposing of the chaff! Your world suffers for his weakness!" A hologram appeared in the air before the platform, a quick montage of horrors verifying the acuity of his words. Midgar convulsed under an orgy of death: hives with smoking holes leaking poisoned air into delicate interiors, people fleeing into the wastelands only to die as the toxic filth of millennia ate through their protective suits and finally, blue power armored figures wandering through the chaos unharmed. This last image brought a cry to the soldier's lips.
The one who had led the attack of chaos cultists that had started all this had been thus armored in blue, a color which contrasted strongly with the vivid red of their rescuers. A thought gathered in the room, whispered at first and soon shouted aloud by the gathered PDF troopers. "Our world dies and those who drew this doom down upon us are immune to it! Midgar dies for nothing!" The Dark Apostle's eyes gleamed as he spoke again and gradually restored the room to silence, "This is the result when men invoke a weak god who lacks the power and the will to protect his worshipers! Yes, you should feel rage and frustration at the death of everything you have ever known! This doom is assured, for even if the hives can be repaired and the forces your inquisitor sought to destroy don't use this period of anarchy to achieve victory, he has released potent bio toxins to finish his ghastly work!" The room was quiet as the hygienically minded hive dwellers remembered ingrained lessons about the danger of disease in such close quarters as the hives demanded.
If anything more aware of the perils of bioweapon usage, Sain Gaisis could only imagine the results of an intentional release of such poisons. He looked at his former soldiers and struggled to gather the energy needed to say anything helpful to them before giving up and returning to his introspective thoughts. Sain looked up as Pontirus spoke again, "The magnitude of such woe can crush an unsupported being. Faith in a higher power is the only thing that can see one through such a thing as this, but faith must be placed in good trust. A god who does nothing to aid his people after they have sacrificed long and hard is not worthy of such faith."
Gaisis stilled as did every other being in the room as the Dark Apostle drew a gleaming weapon from its sheath. The haft was like ebony and golden spikes extruded from it as they watched. The marines at the edge of the room began an indecipherable chant that twisted at the edge of Sain's hearing as though it wasn't meant for human ears. Pontirus spoke again, his voice loud and echoing against the back drop of chanting marines as he drove his message into the hearts and minds of the PDF soldiers, "It was the Emperor and his lackeys who have doomed your world! His vision of mankind's needs are myopic and faulty. Your world has fallen and been destroyed because of His agent's inability to stop That Which Permeates The Universe! Chaos! True, chaos is cruel, merciless, and demanding. It asks for that which most men lack: absolute faith. The excesses of chaos can destroy any man, but a balance of its facets brings perfection! So spake the Primarch Lorgar, four millennia ago when he rose up against the False Emperor, he who has doomed your world through his ignorance, and sought to bring humanity into an era of unsurpassed glory! I invite you, those who have seen the corruption at the heart of the False Emperor's undeserving dominion, to join the true crusade: a crusade against the weakness of man when he is deprived of worthy gods! I can promise that no follower of the Word Bearer creed will die in vain, for the gods acknowledge each sacrifice and never act without reason! Join my Host, follow our creed and never be without purpose again!"
As the crowd of soldiers was filled with confusion, Sain Gaisis fell to his knees. His heart and soul was in turmoil. The memories of his youth: of the beneficent Emperor watching over his flock battled against the horrific memories of the most recent days. He could only see the Dark Apostle's words against the backdrop of his world's demise. Knowing that all he loved was dead or dying drove him further into despair. In the blackness of his mind, he flailed for something to hang onto, something to restore certainty to his world. That something was Pontirus' voice, more calm, more controlled now. "Those who would join us will depart upon our vessels within the hour. You will then become a part of our eternal pilgrimage which seeks to bring the light of Chaos to the hearts of men and grant them the spiritual and physical power to withstand the tribulations of the universe. Those who retain faith in the False Emperor will be returned to your dying homeworld in the hope that He will save it from its demise. I would not have your blood taint the sanctity of my Host's weapons and will allow this mercy." The crowd began to split, many going with the chaos marines through the northern most passage under the balcony. Only a few went the other way resigned and willing to die with their world.
Sain stood caught in the middle for a moment. He gazed at the Dark Apostle as he sheathed his ebony weapon and than Gaisis followed the bulk of the crowd under the balcony and into the passage way. A word in high gothic was emblazoned on the archway above the passage. Mikaihelian. Rebirth in the grandest of mankind's tongues. Sain Gaisis thought the word appropriate for those forsaken by all they've known and embracing a fearful new course. Having made his choice, Sain felt a small measure of peace as he fell into introspection. Perhaps it would make an apt name as well. There was certainly no strength to be drawn from his current one and changes, painful changes, had and would continue to occur. Perhaps a new name would ease the transition. Mikaihel indeed seemed to fit... Lost in his musings, he was swallowed by the shadows of the hallway.
When the initiate had vanished into the mist, the Chosen began to sonorously chant a catechism as old as the Imperium. They called to the dark gods in their eternal glory for their champion to be returned to them. The chaos marines and acolyte took up the refrain, a lighter psalm that carried to the sound of the rite to the gathered mutant hoards outside the encampment. The mutants ceased their screeching, enthralled by the chorus. A sudden flurry of lightning bolts struck the dome of smoke in the center of the plaza, lancing out of the night without warning. A terrible pressure gathered in the gray mist: the ground cracking, static leaping from the spikes on the chaos marine's armor, and daemonic visages flickering into and out of existence. These were mere signs of the laws of physics being twisted beyond their limitations as a bubble of warp space formed in the plaza.
The formation of the bubble snapped Mikaihel out of his trance and drove the memories of his dream from his wakening mind. He lashed out with his warp bound senses, seeking something amid the cacophony of voices that packed the warp and were beginning to close on the locus of his being. Mikaihel found it in the initiate whose bloody tattoos blazed light to keep the hungry spirits of the warp away from him until the Dark Apostle could find him. The daemon prince poured into the initiate's body, swiftly consuming his soul as he subdued the stubborn daemon trapped in his Crozius. His mind rallied, Mikaihel gathered his energies for the return to material space.
In the plaza, the dome of smoke began to collapse into itself swiftly becoming translucent. Soon the Dark Apostle was visible in flashes: a lean limb sprouting a curved blade, a black weapon with spikes of gold, and metallic wings congealing out of the mist. He absorbed the magically enriched fumes, forming it into his physical manifestation. The fleeing forms of daemons were briefly visible as they hurried away from the interface, unwilling to be absorbed by the incarnating daemon prince in his monumental need for energy. Mikaihel collapsed the warp bubble with a deafening crack, the sound sharply echoing of the dark metal buildings of the encampment as the chorus of Chosen, marines, and acolytes fell silent. The golden winged figure crouched panting on the bleached and melted ground that had been emblazoned with the pentagram. His robe lashed restlessly and he tightly clutched his Crozius as he began to control his labored breathing. His wings furled themselves as he straightened and looked over the silent mass of his Host from under his hood. The silence held, the passivity of his face concealing any emotions he might be experiencing. Then Mikaihel, Dark Apostle and Daemon Prince, directed his Host in prayer lit by torches in the moonless night.
Legal Disclaimer: I do not own Warhammer 40k in any way, shape or form. That honor belongs to Games Workshop and I'm not contesting that. I don't intend to make a profit from this and hope that this doesn't get me sued... Please!