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The Anchor of Vaul
745.M32
"Do we have any idea what the inside of the Anchor looks like ?" asked Akhaman.
The image of the Autarch shook his head. Communications between the Judgement's Will and the Eldar flagship was spotty, due to the machine-spirits of the frigate rightfully protesting being made to interact with the xenos technology, but it was serviceable enough.
"None," replied the Eldar commander. "The records of Mian-Tor contain precious little information about this place, and most of it is couched in poetry and metaphors so obscure even our wordsmiths struggle to make sense of them. All I can tell you is that the command center will be near the top of the Anchor, where it joins with the many-angled root of the Riaway Noara's cage."
"That will be Arken's destination as well," said Alphon. The other Inquisitor stood just behind Akhaman, his armor still bearing the damage of the boarding action he had helped fight off.
"Undoubtedly. I don't know how he intends to bend the works of the ancients to his will, but he must have a way, or at least believe he does."
"We faced far too few Chaos Marines during the void battle. He must have emptied his ships inside the Anchor, but it is vast." And wasn't that an understatement. Nothing the Imperium had ever built even approached the scale of the Anchor of Vaul, though there were a few structures dating back to the Dark Age of Technology that might – might – be in the same class. "He must intend for them to hold us back while he completes his scheme, whatever it is."
"Yes. The battle to come will be difficult, but even if we win and defeat the armies that defile the Anchor with their presence, we might still lose the war. According to the Farseer, your secret weapon is the only one that may face what Arken has become now with any chance of success." It was inevitable that the Eldars would detect the presence of the Grey Knights, and Elydeos wasn't sure how this would be handled in the future, but it was a concern for after they had dealt with the Forsaken Sons. "Her vision of the future is blurred by the great powers at work in this system, but I trust her judgment in this, and you should as well."
The Farseer's difficulties were unsurprising. According to the latest message from Supreme Grand Master Janus, even the Grey Knights' second sight was blotted by the awful potential the Forsaken Sons' presence on the Anchor represented. The weight of the Nightmare Fleet's possible return was a shadow cast across every possible future, and while Janus had been clear that the Forsaken Sons' victory wasn't inevitable, its mere possibility was enough to blind them.
"I suggest we use the same tactic we did on Nerel," continued the Autarch.
"Separate our forces and launch two assaults from opposite directions ?"
"Exactly. Time is of the essence : we'll need to advance as fast as we can. Given that, combining our forces, with their vast differences in speed, is a recipe for disaster."
At least the Autarch was polite enough not to straight out say that the human soldiers were much slower and clumsier than the Eldar troops, though it was the truth. Elydeos nodded, and pointed at one side of the Anchor on the central hololithic display.
"We'll enter from here, and advance with all speed. I expect we'll encounter the forces of the Forsaken Sons soon. While our troops engage them, our specialist assets will deployed deeper into the complex and hunt down Arken."
"Then we'll strike from the opposite side. Keep in mind that we don't know the layout of the facility, so it is possible our forces will end up meeting inside. I'll give my warriors orders to cooperate, and I expect you to do the same."
"I shall," promised the Inquisitor Lord. "This is too important to let our divisions stand in our way."
No more words were exchanged before the link went down. Allies they might be, but they would never be friends. Neither of their cultures would allow it, and should the day be won and the Forsaken Sons be defeated, it was unlikely they would part amicably. They both knew it, yet such was the threat of the Nightmare Fleet that Akhaman was certain the Eldars wouldn't be the first to break the truce – and neither would he nor any of the Imperial forces. The orders he had given had been very clear : anyone making an aggressive move toward the Eldars would be executed immediately.
The Inquisitor Lord watched on the display screens as the fleet approached the Anchor, all of them mere insects before its immense size. The Eldar ships detached from the Imperial armada, moving swiftly around the megastructure to their assigned entry point.
The auspexes of the fleet scanned the landing zone, and found no sign of any traps left by the Forsaken Sons. Given the size of the area, it had always been unlikely : the heretics would likely focus their efforts deeper into the megastructure, where the passages grew tighter and the auspexes meant for orbital scanning couldn't reach.
Once again, the Heirs of Sanguinius took point, with the Imperial Guard following in their wake. Dozens of tanks and transport vehicles rolled through the empty space of the landing bay, the magnificent sight of so much armour diminished only by the sheer scale of their surroundings. Despite all their strength, they looked like a procession of ants crossing a palace's marble floor.
Having confirmed that the disembarkment was going well, Elydeos left the bridge. He, and the rest of the Inquisitorial forces, had their own part to play in what was to come.
The Anchor knew from watching the void around it that the second wave of intruders were enemies of the first. The fight that had occurred was small compared to the other and only engagement it had ever seen, but the sides were clear. But that fight didn't make it clear whether the second wave of intruders were enemies of its purpose as well.
It watched as beings that reminded it of its creators came inside its halls. They were similar, but lesser, like children yet their bodies were those of adults. Their soul-fires were dimmed, and the devices they brought were primitive, barely more advanced than those of the intruders. Yet there was one thing among them that was familiar, though equally diminished. One that stirred something that wasn't quite anger and wasn't quite fear, as the echoes of its makers' faith recognized it.
It didn't like it, in as much as it could be said to like or not like anything. But it also knew that the entity wasn't an enemy of its purpose, and that was more important. These pale reflections of its makers were allies of its purpose, which meant that the others of the second wave must be as well.
They came into one of the refinement chambers, where the starfire was refined to power its myriad mechanisms. The first intruders were waiting for them there, but they hadn't advanced further, so it had let them to their own devices, focusing instead on those who most threatened its purpose.
The wicked fey had come in great numbers to defend this prison they had built in past ages. Long ago, the fey had been the most beloved children of the Gods, but they had betrayed them, rejecting their gifts and imprisoning the angels that had been sent to set them back on the right path. For millennia, the angels had sought a way to free their imprisoned brethren, and they had called the people of Etharic to assist them in this holy mission.
And so, here they stood now, ready to meet the fey in a plain of ash and fire, where great volcanoes rose from the ground. The armies of Etharic waited for the foe in their formations, Bellarius and his peers spread out among them. Thousands of Etharic's greatest warriors, armed with the best weapons of their world's forges, with the Lords granted armaments from the vaults of the Gods themselves. Bellarius himself stood at their head, his emerald blade polished so that it shone like a beacon in the light of the molten rock.
The angels who had brought them here had gone deeper into the prison, where they might break the chains holding their brethren captive. But they hadn't left Bellarius and his people to fight alone : instead, they had commanded eight of their Giants to stand alongside them. Like the people of Etharic, the Giants had been elevated by the Gods, given new purpose in their grand crusade to bring their glorious light to the universe. They towered above even Bellarius and his fellow Lords, and were clad in heaven-forged armor as well as wielding the very weapons of the Gods themselves.
Before them came the fey, their corrupted bodies completely hidden beneath black, cruel-looking armor. Metal chariots drawn by ghostly spirits moved among their hosts, and their leader – whose rank was marked by the grotesque butterfly wings that rose fro his back – stood on one of them.
Bellarius raised his blade, letting all of his people see the weapon that had its own place in the legends of Etharic.
"For the Gods ! For Etharic ! CHARGE !"
With an answering war-cry, his army launched itself at the fey. Their first line fell, struck by the fey's arrows, but they kept on charging, driven by the knowledge that their Gods demanded this of them. Behind them, the Giants brought up the great cannons bestowed upon them by the angels and fire, releasing balls of holy fire that flew above the people of Etharic and slammed into the ranks of the fey.
The two hosts made contact, and the air resonated with the sound of clashing metal. Bellarius moved deep into the enemy ranks, cutting down all those who stood in his way. He was aiming for the fey leader : if he could strike him down early in the battle, the enemy resolve would be broken, and victory achieved at a lesser cost in lives. As the eldest Lord of Etharic, such was his duty, even if it meant risking his own life.
"In the name of the Gods, I strike at you, fiend !"
The grotesque mon-keigh mutant howled something undecipherable, and Irithiel Arthes grimaced in disgust as droplets of its spit fell upon his helmet. Its greenish claws were slick with the blood of his kin, having cut through their armor as if it were grass.
The Autarch ignited his Swooping Hawk wings, leaping under the mutant's attack and into reach of his power sword. The ancient blade of the Arthes family plunged through the metal plating loosely attached to the creature's chest and into its flesh. Brackish blood spurted out, and he moved out of the way, unwilling to dirty his armor with it. The brute barely seemed to notice.
It was tough, he would give it that. But Irithiel had killed Ork Warbosses before, and this mutant had nothing on the greenskins that had risen in the wake of the Beast's ascension two hundred cycles prior.
Still, the Autarch was no fool. As the monster turned to face him, he gestured to the Aspect Warriors all around them : the mutant had stupidly isolated itself by going for Irithiel. As one, the Eldar soldiers fired, delivering concentrated volleys of razor shurikens into the hulking brute's flesh. It stumbled as its skin and muscles were torn to bloody shreds, and the Autarch seized the opening. With a thought, he ignited his jump-pack again, striking as he passed above the mutant. When he landed back on his Fire Prism, the mutant's head had slid from its shoulders and hit the ground.
This might seem dishonorable, but there was no glory to be had in fighting a beast in single combat, not when so much was at stake. He had only seen a fraction of the Anchor, yet even that was magnificent. Around them, the starfire drained from the captured sun below was being transformed into power for the great engines that kept the Riaway Noara locked away. The concept of that much energy being used boggled the mind : the entire Craftworld was able to survive merely by leeching off the radiance of isolated stars, sustaining the entire civilization of Mian-Tor with a fraction of what the Anchor was draining.
The military applications of such technology were staggering, but the Path of Command didn't blind Irithiel to what else might be achieved with such limitless energy at their command. Forges that had gone cold centuries ago might be re-ignited, and the sections that had been ravaged by the Orks repaired. They could expand the agricultural and residential sectors, allowing the population of the Craftworld to grow. The Eldars reproduced much more slowly than the vermin-like humans, but lack of resources was a big reason why the population of the Craftworlds couldn't hope to match their dark kin of Commoragh, who preyed upon the entire galaxy from within their secure haven.
But if the artisans of Mian-Tor could learn how to reproduce the Anchor's extraction technology, all of that might change – and this was just one part of the megastructure. What other secrets might be uncovered in this holy place, the last true creation of the smith-priests of Vaul before the growing corruption that had led to the Fall cut them off from their god ?
A great cry of what sounded like despair and anger rose from the mutants at the sight of their leader so casually slain. They didn't break, however, but instead redoubled their onslaught, uncaring of how fast the Eldars were cutting them down with their superior weaponry – though in this case, this was hardly surprising, as the mutants carried primitive weapons even by mon-keigh standards.
Still, there were a great many of them, and already dozens of the sons and daughters of Mian-Tor had fallen. The clumsy but powerful walkers at the back of their lines, each even taller than the Sha'eilat bio-construct they had faced on Nerel, also rained death upon the Eldar host, straining the efforts of the Warlock conclaves to shield them. Attempts at defeating them through psychic powers had also failed : the walkers were partly daemonic in nature, and three Warlocks had perished in the attempt, their souls ripped from their bodies.
At that moment, the Autarch felt a wave of heat wash over him and into his soul, igniting the fires of rightful anger. The Avatar of Khaine had joined the battle, and the warriors of Mian-Tor were reinvigorated by its presence.
Irithiel had been relieved when he had learned the Avatar had survived the battle of Nerel : they were likely to need its power in the war against the Forsaken Sons, and even if it had been successfully roused once more, restoring it would have cost another priceless Eldar soul. But that hadn't been necessary.
Even as the rest of the Craftworld's troops had been forced to withdraw by the tide of ghostly Orks, the God-Shard had held its ground, fighting the specters without taking a single step back. When the necromantic ritual had stopped and the ghosts had vanished, Irithiel had found the Avatar still standing, with no wounds save those it had already suffered fighting the Sha'eilat construct : the psychic energy animating the spectral Orks had been no match for the raging inferno burning within it. It had been returned to the fleet, where it had waited through the crossing of the Path to Nightmares, its sealed chambers undisturbed by the daemons that had plagued the rest of the ship. It seemed even the spawn of She-Who-Thirsts dreaded the remnants of Kaela Mensha Khaine's fury.
That fury was now unleashed in full. The Avatar scythed through the ranks of the mutants with its burning blade, advancing toward the metal giants. The Avatar's charge scattered the mutants before it, relieving the Aspect Warriors and allowing Irithiel to command his heavy vehicles to focus fire on the walkers. In response, the walkers advanced, willingly crushing their own allies under their feet so that they could get in melee range of the Eldars. They moved like a pack of wild animals, with a base cunning and loose unity. Irithiel's trained mind swiftly identified the leader of that pack, however : it was the very same walker the Avatar was advancing toward. If the God-Shard could destroy the much bigger construct, then they would be able to win this battle without bleeding their forces dry. If not …
… if not, they would still keep fighting. The future of Mian-Tor demanded no less.
Strapped on the command throne of Indomitable, his mind and body linked to that of his Knight, Erik watched as a figure of burning lava and hatred advanced toward him. The Eldar daemon's ridiculously elongated helm barely reached the waist of Indomitable.
On the way to the Anchor, Erik had reviewed the information about the Eldars stored in the Hand of Ruin's data-banks. There had been information on this type of creature, recorded during the Great Crusade, when several Eldar Craftworlds had been destroyed by the Legiones Astartes.
It was an Avatar of Khaine, a shard of one of the xenos' dead gods. It carried a blade that made even Indomitable wary, and it was coming straight for him despite the difference in size.
Good. Erik had been waiting for a worthy foe for some time.
"Kill the Eldars," he ordered the other Knights. "I'll deal with their little idol myself."
Revving his immense chainsword, Erik opened fire on the Avatar with his laser cannon – a gift from the Arch-Heretek Merchurion, who had assembled it himself in the forges of the Hand of Ruin. A psychic barrier rose to meet the onslaught, summoned into existence by the xenos witches in the back of their army. He fired again, and the barrier shattered, leaving the Avatar exposed.
This close to the Avatar, Erik felt Indomitable's discomfort increase. The Warp-touched machine-spirit of his mount wasn't afraid – all traces of fear had long since been purged from its gestalt intellect – but it was definitely uneasy. Through his link to the other Chaos Knights, Erik realized the effect on them was much worse : lacking the strength of will of Erik's trained mind to sustain them, the daemons within the other Knights were running amok, terrified of the Avatar's proximity and slaughtering more of their mutant allies than they were the enemy. He needed to end this, and fast.
Erik's first blow with his reaper chainsword nearly eviscerated the Avatar, leaving a deep gouge into its chest from which lava-like blood poured in torrents. His second strike batted aside its burning blade and severed its left arm at the elbow; his third almost took its head off. The artillery of the Eldars opened fire, their shots well-aimed to hit the Knight without harming the Avatar, but the splattered harmlessly against his ion shield. The last Prince of Theressar laughed, the sound blaring out of Indomitable's vox-speakers in a terrifying noise. Did these xenos really think their weapons could harm him ?
Then, suddenly, a stream of incandescent starfire erupted from the closest of the immense devices that nearly completely filled the room. It struck both Indomitable and the Avatar, shorting the ion shield completely and burning through the Knight's armor, while the Avatar was left untouched, its own inner fire more than a match for the stellar fury that had just washed over them both.
Agony spiked into Erik's chest and skull as the damage of Indomitable echoed through the link between Knight and pilot. The Knight fell to its knees, and through the pain-filled haze, Erik saw the wounded Avatar advance toward him.
The Anchor, he thought. The Anchor helped it. If not for that, I would have -
The Avatar struck, burying the Wailing Doom through the melting chest-plate of Indomitable, and Erik of House Lyrok, last Prince of Theressar, was no more.
As the shard of the Bloody-Handed God finished off the leading tainted walker, the others fell to the combined fire of the makers' lesser engines. Having made its decision, the Anchor helped them do so, infusing their machines with a fraction of a fraction of the great energies that coursed through it from the captured star beneath, just like it had helped the God-Shard destroy its foe.
But elsewhere within the Anchor, the fighting continued. Amidst the dimensional holding matrices, entropy spread at a rate far beyond the expected. Already the Anchor had been forced to redirect more power to the sector, as well as bring in more maintenance drones – which it needed to stop the other intruders, deeper inside its holds.
Having seen the descendants of its makers fight the first intruders, it decided that it was most likely their allies would also fight them, and in doing so, help remove the source of increased entropy. To that end, it shifted its paths and walls, directing them toward the matrices.
This place, Chapter Master Raguel of the Heirs of Sanguinius thought, was alive. More than that, it was sentient, or at least capable of reason, which he didn't need to be well-versed in the tenets of the Adeptus Mechanicus to know was a very dangerous thing indeed. Yet it seemed that, at least for now, the Anchor of Vaul was on their side.
It had led them here, after all, to this immense space full of what looked like enormous metallic trees, whose branches were heavy with crystal cubes full of glowing lights. Given the size of the Anchor, it wouldn't have been surprising if they had wandered for days without encountering their enemies, and yet within mere hours they had stumbled upon the location of one of the groups the Forsaken Sons had apparently split their forces into. Unfortunately, that group wasn't the one Arken was in, meaning Raguel's vengeance on the Chaos Lord who had killed him at Silberstadt would still go unfulfilled.
Instead, the Heirs and their Astra Militarum allies faced a horde of grotesque mutants. They were difformed, hideous. Some of them weren't even men but instead monstrous hybrids of beast and human, walking blasphemies that aped the human perfection by standing on two legs.
But something more than mere desecration of the sacred human form was at play here. These creatures were obviously diseased : their skin was pale and bloated, pus ran from open sores, and their animal eyes were fever-bright, along with a myriad of other symptoms his sensors picked up with disgusting clarity. Yet their strength was undiminished by it all; if anything, they were stronger than they should be, and far, far more resilient, shrugging off wounds that should have killed them instantly, or at least send them into shock.
This, combined with the appearance of the few Chaos Marines scattered among them, made it clear that they were followers of the Dark God Nurgle, harbinger of pestilence and rot. Inside his chassis, what remained of Raguel was safe from their contagion, as were his brothers, all of whom wore void-sealed power armor. The Guardsmen coming behind them, however, were less protected. All of them wore gas-masks and full-cover armor, a precaution taken due to not knowing the conditions deeper inside the Anchor, but such protection was less than perfect. Many were already showing signs of weakness, stumbling and twitching as their bodies were wracked by deep coughs.
In any other situation, Raguel would have ordered them back, to let the Heirs of Sanguinius purge the foe with the help of the Militarum's tanks. Here, however, he couldn't. The enemy were too numerous, the battle too important, and most of all, time was of the essence. The Inquisitor Lord had been very clear about this, and much as it galled Raguel to even think it, the lives of the human soldiers who fought alongside his Chapter were an acceptable sacrifice if it meant the Forsaken Sons' plans were thwarted this day.
Terion was there as well, the Captain having chosen to fight side-by-side with his brothers despite his lingering injuries. His participation in the fighting through the Path to Nightmares had apparently reassured him that he could still fight at the level expected of a Space Marine, and his victory over the Forsaken Sons who had boarded the Judgement's Will a few hours ago had solidified his conviction.
"Onward, brothers !" he shouted. "Let the enemies of Man know fear, before they are freed from their miserable existence !"
Petronicus laughed as he fought, something he had never done when he had fought under the command of dour Mortarion in the Great Crusade and the Heresy.
He could feel the Warp pulsing through his veins, the power of Grandfather Nurgle brewing new deadly contagions in his guts. His body was a temple to the power of disease and decay, even more so since he had offered up thousands of souls to the Plague God. Nurgle knew what the Forsaken Sons intended here, the grand plans of destruction and doom Arken had for the galaxy. The Lord of Decay was less appreciative of carnage than his brother Khorne, but the despair the Nightmare Fleet would bring to the galaxy, and the putrefying corpses it would leave in its wake, were promising enough for the endeavour to earn his blessing.
And the Plague Champion was the receptacle of this blessing, which flowed from him and into the other former Death Guards. They were empowered, made even more resilient than they had become since Typhus' trick and Mortarion's bargain. Even the thousands of mortals who had been blessed with Nurgle's gifts were strengthened by his presence, fearlessly holding their ground against the Space Marines and Imperial tanks charging at them.
The loyalist dogs were led by a Dreadnought in the colors of that thin-blooded Chapter, the Heirs of Sanguinius – as if Horus had left anything of the Angel to inherit except agony and failure. Still, the warmachine was tearing through the Poxwalkers, incinerating and ripping them to shreds with its mounted weapons. The way the Space Marines moved around it spoke of a deep respect for the Dreadnought's occupant : whoever was inside must be a hero of some note to their Chapter, their presence on the battlefield buoying their morale as much as its weaponry bolstered their firepower.
Petronicus would relish their despair when he tore the half-corpse from its sarcophagus and delivered upon it the mercy of Nurgle's Gift. With a signal to his brothers, the Plague Champion and his Marines began to advance from their defensive positions. Their advance couldn't be called a counter-charge : they walked far too slowly for that, dragged down by the weight of bloated flesh and the grinding of their rotting limbs. But what they lacked in speed was more than made up for in resilience. Las-bolts and bolt shells slammed into their corpulent forms, spilling pus and rot but failing to do any real damage. Inevitable as death, the Plague Marines advanced into the Imperial lines, with Petronicus marching straight for the Dreadnought.
The Plague Champion fired with his bolt pistol as he advanced, aiming at the Heirs of Sanguinius formed up at the Dreadnought's side. The weapon was almost as changed by the touch of Nurgle as he was : he never needed to reload it, and the rounds it shot were filled with some of the most noxious poisons brewed in Nurgle's Garden by the Dark God's alchemists of foulness. They ate through ceramite and infected the transhuman flesh beneath, leaving Space Marines convulsing on the ground as their bodies were wracked with the bountiful pain that would lead them to either acceptance of the inevitable and rebirth through decay, or a slow, agonizing death, the torment of their final moments of struggle feeding the Garden all the same.
Soon, the Dreadnought identified him as the source of its brothers' fate, and marked him for death just as Petronicus had marked it. It lumbered toward him with deceptive slowness, gathering momentum with every thunderous step. The Plague Champion holstered his bolt pistol, pushing the weapon into a hollow growth of ceramite and bone at his waist, and took up his sword in both hands. It had once been a standard issue power sword, but was now a length of rusted iron dripping with droplets of green liquid, each of which contained enough pathogens to wipe out a small settlement. Like its wielder, it was strong despite its decayed appearance.
An ordinary Astartes would have dodged out of the way of a charging Dreadnought. Certainly most Forsaken Sons would have, except perhaps for those who had once been sons of Angron, though few of them remained in the warband these days, precisely because they did things like not dodging out of the way of charging Dreadnoughts. But Petronicus was a champion of Nurgle. He met the war machine's charge head-on, digging his feet in the ground and leaning in toward the Dreadnought.
The ground shook as the two collided. Petronicus felt something break inside his armor, but the pain was a muted and distant thing, easily ignored. He skidded a few steps backward before stopping. The Dreadnought struck at him with its power claw, and his blocked it with his sword, ramming the blade's jagged tip into the center of the claw and holding it at bay, pitching his own gene-forged and god-augmented strength against the Dreadnought's.
To the horror of the nearby Space Marines and the delighted shouts of the Poxwalkers, he managed to hold his ground.
"DIE, TRAITOR," shouted the Dreadnought from its vox-speakers as they struggled against one another.
"In time, certainly. But you first, corpse-slave," spat back Petronicus. Corrosion spread from where his Plague Sword was planted into the Dreadnought's power claw, making its energy field flicker.
The Dreadnought turned its other limb, this one ending in a heavy flamer, aiming it at an awkward angle directly down at Petronicus. The Plague Champion merely grunted as he was bathed in a stream of fire, the filth that caked his armor stubbornly resisting being burned away.
He pushed his sword deeper into the power claw, only to be caught by surprise as the Dreadnought suddenly rotated to its left, leaving Petronicus unbalanced. His grasp on his sword slipped and he fell to one knee, before the Dreadnought inverted the rotation of its central axis and slammed its power claw into his chest. His armor cracked like an egg, and he felt his guts spill from it.
Petronicus stumbled and reached out for the hilt of his sword, still embedded in the power claw. Before he could take hold of it, however, the Dreadnought stepped back and bathed him in burning promethium once more. This time, the flames passed through the cracks in his warplate, boiling his insides.
The pain was … excruciating. He felt his fused ribcage melt and his rotting organs cook. His vision swam with agony, and he felt one of his eyes burst in its socket as the heat somehow travelled up the optic nerve – not something which could normally happen, but then Petronicus' physiology was very different from that of a normal Space Marine by that point.
It appeared he had underestimated the foe. And after all his bluster earlier, too. This was embarrassing, but one couldn't be a follower of Nurgle for as long as Petronicus had without being willing to accept the inevitable. And at the very least, he would make sure the Dreadnought didn't enjoy his victory for long. He looked up at the helmet on the sarcophagus, right at the eye-lenses through which its occupant looked at the battlefield.
"All your victories will be as ashes," he promised, managing to force the curse out thanks to all the gifts he had received in his long life. "Everything you have fought for … will blacken and burn."
The power claw descended again, tearing through his broken armor and eviscerating him. Petronicus breathed his last, and let loose ruin and despair upon his killer. All the power that had accumulated through his flesh, all the diseases that had been bred inside his body, were unleashed in a black cloud of pestilence that immediately began to attack the Dreadnought's exterior, eating through the metal with infernal ferocity.
Inside his sarcophagus, alarm warnings filled Raguel's artificial vision, and he immediately understood what had happened. Knowing his doom was imminent, Raguel triggered the overloading protocols of his chassis' reactor.
"Terion," he shouted over the vox in the last moment before the end, "lead our brothers well !"
Then the Chapter Master of the Heirs of Sanguinius vanished in a flash of burning light, along with the Plague Champion's corpse and all the Poxwalkers that had rushed in to bathe in their warlord's dying exhalation. Their souls were at last freed of the confines of their ravaged flesh, and ushered in to the rewards waiting for them on the other side of the veil – very different rewards, for while Raguel had at last found the peace denied him at Silberstadt, Petronicus and the infected cultists would forever rot in Nurgle's embrace, their souls serving as compost for his Garden.
The mutual annihilation of both forces' commanders didn't end the fighting, as both sides threw themselves at the other with renewed fury. Captain Terion took command of the Imperial forces, directing his Space Marines to target the daemonhosts and remaining Plague Marines among the horde of diseased mutants.
The progress of entropy slowly returned to its normal rate, but the matrices had still been damaged. The Anchor estimated that they had lost approximately seventy thousands, nine hundred and twenty three standard cycles of their total lifespan. It logged that information in the same status reports it had sent every ten cycles, even though its makers had never answered them.
All of this, however, was of lesser importance compared to the intruders who had made it furthest within it, resisting all its efforts to remove them or make them turn back.
Damarion brought his power maul down, crushing another construct under it while firing with his combi-bolter at another group of them at the same time. They had already destroyed hundreds of the things, but there was a seemingly endless supply of them in the Anchor.
Every construct had an elongated body with over a score of small limbs propelling it onward, ending in a raised torso with longer appendages carrying monomolecular and heat blades that could cut right through power armor. According to Merchurion, they were constructs meant to maintain the Anchor's functionality across the ages, driven by the orders of their long-dead makers. They were responding to the Forsaken Sons' intrusion much as white cells would respond to the presence of foreign agents in a human body, repurposing their tools for battle with vicious efficiency.
If those were the equivalent of maintenance servitors, Damarion was glad he had never faced the Eldars at their peak.
The constructs were immune to las-fire, probably a result of needing to operate around the absurdly potent energies that fuelled this place, but bolt shells and melee weapons worked well enough. Despite how incredibly advanced the technology making them up was, the constructs simply weren't designed or programmed for war – Damarion had a sinking feeling that if that weren't the case, their casualty count would be much, much higher.
They had left most of the Forsaken Sons behind, with one last speech from Arken over the vox. The Awakened One had told them again of the power of the Nightmare Fleet, of the devastation it would wreak upon the Imperium, and of the arrogance of the Grey Knights, who thought they could stop them because of the blessings of the False Emperor. It had been a good speech, one that had stirred the embers of their ancient hate into a raging inferno. With the support of the Argentian skitarii and war engines, the Forsaken Sons had sworn to their lord that they would slaughter all those who made it past the Poxwalkers and mutant hordes, be they Imperial or Eldar. The eldritch insides of the Anchor were as alien to them as they were to their foes, but the Forsaken Sons had grown used to fighting in reality-defying locations during their time in the Wailing Storm.
After the speech, Arken had taken his Terminator bodyguards, some of the most elite packs of veterans of the warband, and a small Dark Mechanicum contingent, though that last group were meant for more than just fighting through the Anchor's defenses. Since then, they had been under near-constant attack.
Presently, the lord of the Forsaken Sons was surrounded by a veritable sea of silvery creatures, yet appeared supremely unconcerned. The Awakened One fought with greater might and ferocity than Damarion had ever seen from him, blazing with the power the Dark Gods had bestowed upon him. His claws ripped the constructs apart, and his armor turned aside all of their attacks. His heavy footsteps crushed the twitching remains of his victims, which formed a growing mount around him.
"Merchurion !" he roared as another Forsaken Son was overwhelmed and brought low by the swarm, still firing his bolter even as he fell. "How much longer ?!"
There was no answer. The Arch-Heretek was hunched over a section of the wall where he had ripped off the plating, exposing the arcane circuitry underneath. Al-Zarak, the representative of the Argentian Dark Mechanicum, stood at his side, covering the Arch-Heretek with weapon fire from at least a score of warped mecha-dendrites, all of which ended in a different but lethal device. Some of the constructs that made it past the circle of Forsaken Sons defending the pair were melted to slag, while others were transformed into stone or decaying flesh, or were hurled into the Warp through small, short-lived breaches into the Immaterium.
They had been stuck in this dead end for nearly ten minutes now, the walls closing in on them without warning and the way they had come in filled with constructs. The Anchor was reacting to their intrusion, trying to stop them. They could have tried to go back, but all that would achieve was lead them into another trap. No, they needed to force their way through, which was what Merchurion was supposed to be doing right now.
If he didn't hurry, then it was only a matter of time before only Arken was left. And while the Terminator had no fear of dying, he did want to live to see his lord's plans fulfilled.
Unknown to the Forsaken Sons, Merchurion was fighting a battle no less fierce than their own.
The Arch-Heretek had managed to establish a data-link between his own systems and those of the Anchor, bastardizing several conversion protocols and translation units in order to do so. Even then, the process remained greatly instinctive, depending on the flexibility of his remaining meat-brain to interpret the signals that came back from the array, overriding his normal sensory inputs.
What this translated to in plain terms was that Merchurion was completely blind to his surroundings as his mind fought against the digital defenses of the Anchor of Vaul, which had been designed to resist the cyberwarfare suites of the Nightmare Fleet itself. Though he would never have said so out loud, Merchurion felt like a rodent trying to sneak inside a Titan and chew at its power cables, and felt that he had about the same lifespan.
His one advantage was that the Anchor's defenses had been designed to fight off attempts to break the Nightmare Fleet free, and to battle the towering intellects of AI vessels and daemonships. Merchurion wasn't trying to do the former (yet), and the comparative insignificance of his mind-spark meant that it was beneath the notice of most of the data-hunting protocols that patrolled the Anchor's datasphere.
He flew on wings made of intrusion programs between fire-walls that stretched all the way to infinity. He dodged the hungry jaws of data-hunters, fighting back with weapons shaped like the ones he wielded in the material plane. He slithered into keyholes, warping the shape of his projected self in order to fit through, something which would have left most tech-priests brain-dead as their minds were unable to cope with the alteration. And, eventually, after what felt like an eternity but that his internal chronometers told him had only been just over ten minutes, he reached his goal and pushed the button his mind saw the complex series of input commands he had painstakingly assembled as.
His awareness returned to his body, to find that the wall in front of him had slid away, revealing the continuation of the tunnel in which they had been trapped.
"Lord Arken !" he called out, blaring the words out of his vox-speakers. "The way is open !"
"Good ! Onward, brothers ! We keep moving !" shouted Arken. His face was a mask of savage glee, the intensity of his emotions matching that of the aetheric readings Merchurion was detecting from him. "This pathetic trap will not stop us ! Nothing will stop us from achieving our goal !"
AN : Hello, everyone ! Another chapter written in a week. If I keep this up I ... actually won't make it to my deadline, but I think I should be able to use my Christmas vacation to finish this before the end of the year.
To answer the review of W8W on the Geller Field's effect on the Helldrake in the previous chapter : I just didn't research it enough and thought it sounded plausible the Field would affect it.
And yes, named characters continue to drop like flies. What did you expect ? To paraphrase a certain crazy Chaos witch (I think from the short story The Skull Harvest), there is only one fate awaiting all warbands in the end.
Also, one funny thing : in the current version of the rules (9th edition) a single Chaos Knight has a Power Rating of 20 to 25 depending on the model, while the Avatar of Khaine has a Power Rating of 12. This might seem overwhelming, but I ran the numbers, and it is statistically possible, if not likely, for the Avatar to win that match if it can get in melee range quickly.
As always, please tell me what you thought of this chapter. Also, I have begun to list story ideas for my next fic (though I will likely try to finish Prince of the Eye too before starting a new one), so if you have suggestions, tell me those as well !
Zahariel out.