THE IRON LICH
With the death of Torian came the end of the Imperial Fist resistance upon Inwit, and with none left to stand in their way the Iron Warriors carried out the remainder of their objectives without delay. The Gene-Seed was taken as intended, but so too were other artifacts within the vault before the entirety of it was consumed in the base's controlled explosion. By taking everything possible they hid their true motives and could plant stolen artifacts on the Iron Warriors bound to the will of Chaos as intended to serve as scapegoats for the attack. Asier and his agents would see to that, and in doing so the Imperial Fists would rid the Iron Legion of its corrupted kin who besmirched the reputation of their shared Legion.
Their departure from Inwit was as planned as their arrival and so with careful maneuvering they escaped from Rogal Dorn's homeworld without anyone being the wiser, their pilfered goods kept in their entirety as they met back with their fleet aboard the Eisernen. Even the most secure of systems could be undermined given enough time and planning, and so Inwit fell victim to the skillset possessed by Asier who now donned the armor he sought after when he brought the base to Jarn's attention decades ago. Not only was it an opportunity to recover the Gene-Seed of those who perished upon Kimara, it was an opportunity for the Alpha Legion agent to take back what was his: he was Alpharius, or so he claimed, and none who witnessed his skill firsthand doubted as much in the moments before they were silenced forever.
It was with warmth that Jarn greeted Asier aboard the Eisernen, placing a hand upon the scaled armor known as the Pythian Scales in solidarity with Asier taking up the mantle and name he had long eschewed for his own reasons.
"It is good to see you as you were meant to be, Friend."
Alpharius, still under the public persona of 'Asier Terminus', nodded and returned the gesture: as cold and clinical as he could be it was evident from his actions that he valued the Warsmith, and despite belonging to the least trustworthy Legion of them all his faith in Jarn was demonstrable and well proven. In tandem they utilized their respective talents to follow the will of the Great Crusade and Emperor they once served, Jarn serving as a public face and bastion of the ideals once held by the Iron Warriors while Alpharius served as a conduit for intel, subterfuge, and the underhanded side to warfare that was necessary when faced with far greater foes.
Despite their victory Alpharius appeared solemn, now wearing the armor of what had likely been his brother, son, or Primarch depending on his true identity. However it came into the possession of the Imperial Fists it had not come without bloodshed and loss, and while eviscerating their forces had helped salve those re-opened wounds it had not healed them completely.
"Even trinkets have their worth," Alpharius noted, the armor he now wore enough to prove his claim to the name he carried and the spear retrieved similarly capable.
He had gifted the Pale Spear to Tristan, allegedly to allow for Tristan to study it in-depth and find ways to recreate its power to repair the weapon should it ever become damaged, but in truth it was a sign from the Alpha Legion's Primarch that he had placed trust and faith in Jarn's student. Years of serving alongside Tristan and guiding his growth had at some point given way to friendship akin to that he shared with Jarn, able to invest his trust in both Tristan and Jarn because they were anathema to the concept of betrayal. For one who lived a life of deceit and lies to be around these Astartes who were so blunt and honest with their true selves was a breath of fresh air, and it was one he seemed to value highly.
Jarn was pleased to see the Alpha Legionnaire he had long believed to be the true Alpharius donning the armor the Fists had hidden away all of this time, but he understood that the subject matter was not so simple for the bearer. To acknowledge his partner's feelings of loss he turned the subject away from the armor itself and to the results of their raid, everything having fallen within their expected parameters even if there had been setbacks.
"To have lost both Khyr and Archimedes at once will impact our timeline, but it will not change our trajectory. We have what we require to move on to the next stage...I will be remiss without you here, but we will meet again soon enough."
With the Warsmith's assessment given Alpharius fell into line with the others who were filing out of their landing ships in the Eisernen's hangar bay, the mood high between the returning Astartes due to their victory over their hated foes even if it did cost a handful of their own lives to accomplish. Khyr and the others lost had been left behind to have their bodies reduced to the point they could only be identified as Iron Warriors while bodies of their Chaos kin were left as well to implicate them.
Once their forces had left their myriad of landing ships with all of the Gene-Seed and stolen equipment they formed rows before their Warsmith, leaving open spaces where their kin would have stood if not for their sacrifices. Unlike Iron Warriors of other warbands those belonging to Jarn had forged a sense of camaraderie in their service together rather than bitter resentment, their lack of numbers and raiding primarily uninhabited worlds meaning that they had to value each life they possessed rather than callously throwing them away for minimal gain. This sense of brotherhood was especially strong towards their leader who kept them always a step ahead of their enemies and had ensured as many of his men survived as possible, and for that even with broken and battered bodies from their combat they stood tall and saluted Jarn with undying respect.
The Warsmith motioned for his men to be at ease, congratulating them and letting them know that their efforts would ensure the future of their Legion. Once formalities, something they all disliked but underwent when necessary, were out of the way he addressed specific individuals to grant them new orders: victory had been obtained, but there was still more work to be done.
"Asier Terminus, Apothecary Ossus, Urkamus Squad, I hereby assign you the task of preparing Kimara for our arrival. It is time that we retook my homeworld and established a permanent base of operations that cannot be taken. We nearly possess the forces and fleet required to lay siege if required, and now we have the Gene-Seed of its fallen Astartes to replenish our ranks."
Alpharius, Ossus, Urkamus, Grund, Helash, and the newcomer Momon all stepped forward and saluted again in acceptance of their new orders. Jarn could have used this opportunity to introduce Asier in his true identity, but both he and Alpharius would rather others believe 'Asier' to just be an Alpha Legionnaire taken under their Legion's wing like Jarn had done for other groups and individuals previously. Loudly proclaiming for all to hear that they possessed the seemingly one and only true Alpharius was a recipe for disaster, and so that secret would remain between those Alpharius entrusted the knowledge to.
Urkamus was typically taciturn and harsh, but one wouldn't know by his professional and respectful tone taken as he accepted his team's new orders, "Your will shall be done, Warsmith."
With their orders given they returned to their places, at which point Jarn addressed the next individual on his mental list of new assignments.
"Apothecary Richter, in the absence of your mentor you shall take his place within our fleet. When the time comes you will reunite with him and assist him in establishing the conditions necessary for our success upon Kimara."
Richter was surprised by the honor given to him given that he still felt like a novice next to Ossus, but he accepted with a wordless nod so as to not allow his voice to betray his feelings beneath his helmet.
"Tristan Bertrand, Levente, step forward."
It was an act requiring a fair deal of effort for Tristan given that his armor was in such disarray after his combat, but it was simple for Levente who stepped forward without any meaningful wounds to speak of. While Tristan could endure a battle until he found victory Levente was capable of rapidly ending his battles so that the damage inflicted upon him was minimal, and it showed with their respective armor. As an interesting mirror between them Tristan now held the Primarch-sized Pale Spear while Levente had the fallen Khyr's Iron Brand at his side, the Power Sword having cleaved its way through many Imperial Fists during the raid.
Jarn addressed Tristan first, and while he was speaking to Tristan his voice was carried in a way to make certain that the entire crowd of Iron Warriors present could hear every word, "The success of this operation was brought by your tactical acumen, Tristan. Not only that, you secured the contents of the vault and reclaimed a future for our Legion. Your youth does not invalidate your successful commanding of our fleet nor the blow now dealt to the Imperial Fists, and your efficient accumulation of the materials we will need to fuel our ambitions was praised by Archimedes himself. You will now take command in his stead and join my Triarch to further lend your mind to our operations, and through them the survival of our kind."
Tristan felt unworthy but bowed his head regardless, unwilling to question the Warsmith to whom he owed everything. He knew that objectively everything said was correct, but Tristan knew also that it was only Jarn investing so much talent, effort, and resources into Tristan's growth that he was able to accomplish so much. It was not something he would have ever been capable on his own, especially not with his lack of outward charisma, but the Warsmith had seen his potential and done what he could to allow it to be met. For that Tristan would always be grateful even beyond owing his life and purpose to Jarn, and so he resolved himself to serve well as his council among the Triarch.
Next was Levente, who stood proudly before his idol and presented himself as firmly as he could despite seeming half of the Astarte's height beside him, "Levente, you already stood as heir to Khyr's command, and your unmatched battle record within our Legion speaks for itself. Should any oppose your taking his place they are welcome to test your combat prowess, though I doubt any are foolish enough to dare make an attempt."
Levente bowed both to show respect and because he knew Tristan would likely fall over if he attempted the same action, the colossal Astarte's wounds and damaged armor a stark contrast to Levente's near flawless appearance. Their relationship was a competitive one, and if he could appear all that much more glorious before a crowd then he would to better win their favor. More Astartes from the Legion could have been gathered there to greet them, but Jarn had them assigned to other projects and endeavors and so this small ceremony was held only by those who had undergone the Inwit mission. To pull others from important tasks for simple ceremony would go against the Iron Warriors' work ethic and natures, but to not celebrate their victory at all would be to repeat the mistakes of the Great Crusade and so they were venerated properly albeit with restraint.
"Today is one of triumph even if it came at a great cost: do not forget the sacrifices of our kin here and use them to steel yourselves for the battles to come. Our campaign of conquests throughout the sea of stars is reaching its end, and soon we shall retake what is rightfully ours!"
Jarn rose his massive fist into the air and bellowed to all the Astartes before him.
"Iron Within!"
His rallying cry was repeated by the rows of Astartes before him with even greater fervor, their spirits having never been lifted higher than this day. It felt as if the stars would become theirs and that nothing could stand in their way, and that spirit would drive them forward in the months and years to come as they carried out the final tasks necessary for their conquest.
In the previous years and decades the majority of the Iron Legion's Astartes forces had been stationed at their shipyards to work on their fleet, most of those assigned being those unable to properly engage in field operations beyond a support role. This way their talent could be best utilized without squandering their technical abilities on a battlefield their broken bodies could no longer endure, and it allowed for those with abler bodies to continue their campaigns. The resources accrued were returned back to the shipyards to churn out replacement equipment, vehicles, and to contribute towards their fleet's creation.
The absence of Asier and Urkamus Squad was odd for Tristan at first while he got used to running things as the leader of the Kheledakos, but despite now commanding a small fleet of battleships instead of a single one he found the principle similar enough to hit the ground running. Before he could rely upon 'Brechung' and Urkamus Squad to carry out whatever specific missions he needed to be accomplished so their absence was felt, though this is not to say his new subordinates were incapable: those such as Quidel and Richter were old companions of his from Alpha Squad, it just was different and Tristan was naturally opposed to change of nearly any kind when he could help it.
It was an enormous responsibility to be left in charge of their fleet while the Warsmith oversaw the entirety of their Legion and Levente handled the ground operations, but Tristan's mind was one primed for handling the logistics involved with his duties. By commanding more than a single part of the larger fleet he now was able to harvest resources for them at a far greater rate through methodical strip-mining of uninhabited worlds until nothing was left but materials they could not use or some threat forced their operations to move along.
On that front Palamedes had proven to be as great a nuisance as ever, and it took effort on Tristan's part to hold back from turning the Iron Legion's fleet upon the Word Bearers nipping at their heels because the difference in the sizes of their forces: no outcome would favor the Iron Legion or be worth the risk, and so it was logical to ignore them even if Tristan wanted to indulge his wrath against the one who took his family and home away so many years back.
The Chaos forces were not fools and had taken note of the Iron Legion's operations after they clashed upon Tristan's homeworld, and now they picked up the pieces left behind whenever they caught their trail again. Through their foul control of the Warp they seemed capable of finding the Iron Legion even when the Imperium could not, and while it was obvious that Palamedes' forces wished to wipe out the Iron Warriors they trailed behind they were greedily feeding upon everything left behind when their mere appearance would threaten the Iron Warriors off of a particularly sizable bounty. Beyond pure efficiency in not having to fight various battles this drove Tristan to prioritize uninhabited worlds and moons since there would not be Humans to be sacrificed or recruited left behind, but it furthered his grudge against Palamedes to know that the Chaos Lord was using him to fuel his own campaigns.
The Daemon Prince had spoken to Tristan about a bond they shared, one that he did not quite understand in full, but which he remembered pieces of from their prior battle. Palamedes had seen a vision in blood spilled from his enemies through the Warp's power, and that vision was of them battling to the death upon an icy world: Palamedes had presumed it had been the one they last met on, but Tristan's survival then likely meant that the Daemon Prince was searching for another fitting icy domain to slay him upon.
While Tristan had no such belief in prophecies or visions he knew that a Word Bearer who devoutly worshipped the Ruinous Powers likely was more susceptible to such a thing, and so Tristan had purposefully avoided frigid worlds when he could. It did not matter if he believed in it, only how his foe would read into such a situation and react accordingly, and so Tristan abused his pursuer's faith to prevent direct conflict when possible. Palamedes wanted his slaying of Tristan to be a spectacle and the longer Tristan could deny that opportunity the better off his forces would be, for each planet mined to its core was another closer to obtaining the total resources Jarn said were necessary for their goals. Then the Word Bearers would suffer for their actions, and while occasional skirmishes broke out when things were cut too close Tristan had managed to mostly hold the Word Bearers at bay.
For now though he was patient and accepted that the Word Bearers were going to continue exploiting their efforts, finding comfort in the fact that the impatience of the Khorne-devoted warband sometimes allowed Tristan to pick off a few of them as opportunities arose and the Eisernen's lances were given targets. The Word Bearers were not solely driven by their hunt of the Iron Warriors and were focusing their own efforts on corrupting Imperial worlds, but that was not something the Iron Legion could presently do anything about: better to use the time they spent doing that on furthering their own plans than risk everything for an Imperial planet that would turn on the Iron Warriors the moment the Word Bearers were hypothetically repelled.
Palamedes' total forces were hard to get a definite number on, but from glimpses at their fleets put them at least around ten times the size of the Iron Legion now. Whatever Jarn was constructing would likely level that playing field Tristan reckoned, as despite only pieces having been assembled bit by bit throughout the years it gave him the impression that whatever fleet was coming their way would be a force to be reckoned. Jarn withheld information about the complete project from all but Asier, with even those building at the shipyards only knowing what was necessary to do their jobs so that the greater plans of their ships could not fall into enemy hands by any chance.
The brutally efficient methods Tristan employed to gather resources rarely went awry, but one occasion would spill into a far more disastrous one down the road. It had been four Terran years since he had been named leader of the Kheledakos and he was growing more comfortable with his role, even if it meant on occasion having to deal with his old rival Levente. Given their positions as the right and left hand of the Warsmith on his Triarch they would occasionally meet in more civil terms, but Levente was far more forceful in his troop deployments than Khyr had been and it risked success in favor of speed.
If Tristan cared enough to ascertain Levente's reasoning for commanding their ground forces this way it would likely lead back to Tristan's own successes regarding their acquisition of supplies, and thus Levente felt pressured to keep pace with Tristan's own successes while accruing additional ones on the battlefield. In this way Levente both pushed himself to outshine Tristan in the task they both shared while also eclipse him on the battlefield, proving himself above his counterpart on the Triarch as well as honing his own skills to one day serve as Warsmith should Jarn perish.
This was of course all lost on Tristan who did not actually care what or why Levente did things the way he did, only how he then had to react and work around them. Whereas Tristan favored methodical and precise deployments Levente favored opportunistic ones that had the greatest opportunity for success and glory even if they incurred other risks, meaning that the division between the two of them soon grew into an unstated divide between their forces.
Those under Tristan's command were recruits and veterans with cooler temperaments who had served under Archimedes before him faithfully and without question as Iron Warriors were expected to, while those beneath Levente tended to be those more reckless who served best as shock-troopers and siege-breakers. Each had their place and purpose, and the Iron Warriors had always possessed Astartes of both kinds as shown by Perturabo's own Triarch including both Forrix and Kroeger who could not have differed more in temperament. This difference in personalities among their officers allowed for the creation of new strategies and tactics on the battlefield and rivalry had been encouraged to see them push themselves to their best.
As relatively new and inexperienced leaders however both Tristan and Levente made the mistake of believing their personal grudges would not spread out into the soldiers under their command, and so the seeds of division were sewn. Opinions amongst the ground forces grew that Tristan was nothing more than a pencil-pusher who was a good administrator but whose youth showed that the Warsmith had played favorites, with these loyal Astartes to the Warsmith feeling that Tristan had somehow tricked their glorious leader into granting his student that position of power. Similarly amongst the fleet the cold and clinical Astartes there saw Levente as being too short-sighted and in need of the wisdom age would bring him, quietly waiting out whatever losses he might bring in the hopes that he would learn in time. It was not that they were fanatically loyal to Tristan given his impersonal nature, but those working beside him at least knew better than to question his intellectual capabilities.
In a total force of around four-thousand Astartes three-thousand were stationed at the shipyards working to complete the project they had been given while the other thousand traveled within their fleet to gather the final resources needed. Tristan had left some of their Battleships behind to protect the shipyard but its own defenses were strong enough to repel most foes and so he kept the majority of the fleet together on their expeditions, always taking care to make certain not even the Word Bearers followed them back to their base upon concluding a trip. Of these thousand Astartes one-third were under Tristan's command, one-third were Levente's, and the final third were on paper belonging to Asier's Triarch identity and so instead were commanded directly by Jarn on the battlefield.
Jarn appeared content to allow both Tristan and Levente to find their footing as leaders, giving them time and space to develop their skills while granting input and criticism where necessary, but largely leaving them to fill into their roles that they had been seemingly born to fulfill. They had the exact talents they needed, and neither Khyr nor Archimedes had begun as masters of their craft so a few years of practice was nothing in the eyes of the long-lived Astartes. Despite their respective flaws they each were quite effective and ultimately worked together, whatever friction there was giving way to begrudging respect and loyalty based on their shared brotherhood.
A few hundred Astartes each was a seemingly small amount to veterans of the Great Crusade, but in actuality it was enough for much of their work. A handful of Astartes were said to be capable of conquering a planet, and so a thousand of them which rivaled the Loyalist's Chapter organization in size was enough to overcome almost any threats in their path. Just as the Iron Legion was fractured so too were most entities thousands of years after the disastrous Horus Heresy, allowing them to pick targets when necessary that could not fight back against their full might.
It did mean however that each and every loss was a severe one, and so Tristan took to deploying automata instead of his Astartes where possible to mitigate casualties. This practice reduced overall efficiency to a degree, but it would prove vital when the Iron Legion stumbled upon an Imperial mining outpost with unforeseen danger laying within. The moon by the designation of E-Epsilon lacked Imperial naval support and so a quick subduing of its minor population would grant the Iron Legion complete access to its bountiful resources on paper, and on this note Levente and his forces invaded it immediately to blitz any defense forces it possessed before they even knew what hit them. Tristan instead held back his own forces and deployed automata of his design to the ground to investigate it further, being one step behind Levente's invasion.
No armed resistance was found, and instead terrified civilian miners were found fleeing from their mines within the moon's forests. Chasing after them was a form of unidentified Xenos that Levente's forces crushed with their overwhelming firepower, though the prospect of Xenos acquiring the moon's resources before them drove Levente forward with an advance team including his top lieutenants Dominicus and Gunnar. Given the seeming lack of Xenos ships in orbit it appeared that their number was few and could be routed immediately if pressed, the lack of recorded native life upon the planet luring Levente into a false sense of security.
From the Eisernen Tristan utilized his automata's data feeds to see what was happening on the ground, soon finding himself aghast with horror at what they found brimming beneath the moon's surface: a species he had only read of before in texts of the Great Crusade but which were unmistakable as the Ak'Haireth. The Ak'Haireth were a fungoid, predatory, and parasitic Xenos species that had been eliminated by the Alpha Legion in one of the Legion's earliest campaigns, but it would appear that some variant of the fungus had spread out prior to the purge that eliminated all known Ak'Haireth.
Their sentience was acquired from operating as psychically interwoven gestalt 'blooms' while their existence was sustained by the siphoning of nutrition from living animals, preferably Humans and their bone marrow, in a slow and agonizing process. They had feasted upon colonies and feral world at the fringes of their sector at the time where those present could not defend against their invasions, and despite purges led by both the Luna Wolves and eventual Night Lords survived the purges in both instances. Their defeat had only come when the Alpha Legion as led by Alpharius had developed a virus to wipe the Ak'Haireth out, poisoning not the Ak'Haireth themselves but the Humans they would feast upon. While Human fatalities from the virus were relatively low at seven percent it wholly wiped out the Ak'Haireth over the course of generations of the fungus, solving the issue seemingly forever more.
What Tristan discovered however was that the Ak'Haireth present here was not some natural survivor of the cowardly Xenos species that fled as the Ak'Haireth tended to do, but rather the result of Nurgle cultists within the Imperium who discovered it some time ago. Unable to control the fungus they too had been consumed by it, but not before their dark rituals had mutated the Psyker race severely. They had laid dormant in the millennia since only to have been awoken by the mining activity upon the moon, and now they sensed new prey to feast off of. Not only that, their mutations had the Ak'Haireth begin forming gestalts not only with one another but with those infected by them resulting in even greater monstrosities appearing before the Astartes surprised by them and the automata sent as reinforcements.
The horrors of mutation the Warp could bring about were almost indescribable but Tristan had seen them many times since his induction into the Iron Legion: this was different. The mixture of the parasitic Xenos with the corrupting influence of the Warp saw abominations writhing in vile forms spew forth from the open mines and rapidly overtake the civilians present on what was believed to be a secure moon, Human cries of terror forming a cacophony over audio feeds as their bodies were rapidly transformed by the hyper-potent fungal plague spreading across the moon's surface.
In the immediate surge of Xenos monsters Tristan witnessed a man's upper body shrivel up as the Ak'Haireth that drained his body grew from the size of a grenade to larger than his torso had been, showing that the slow consumption from the species' past was long since gone. The miner's body continued to move and he moaned in pain showing that even as it grew to a husk he was still alive and suffering, something all the more horrifying when his right arm mutated into a fungal growth in the vague approximation of an arm but many times the size that was then used to beat down another fleeing miner and drag them back to other Ak'Haireth hungering for prey.
The woman it caught was infected by yet another Ak'Haireth, her cries of pain as it twisted her insides a horrifying spectacle on its own until the Ak'Haireth's growth became apparent: her infection swelled and swelled and swelled until her screaming was silenced in but a single moment, an explosion of spores radiating out from her body and infecting other terrified civilians fleeing alongside her.
Tristan immediately deployed his entire retinue of automata to secure an evacuation zone for the Astartes on the ground, Quidel volunteering to extract them with a team of flamer-equipped Astartes. Quidel's talent with a flamer had seen Tristan make him his own Terminator suit that had one built into each arm, and fortunately it incorporated the filtration technology Tristan had developed in years past to aid in combat against chemical weapons and the Death Guard. Levente and his team had similar equipment, but if they were damaged enough by the beasts attacking them not even their Power Armor would save them.
Joining them was Jarn himself who was intent on saving Levente as well as Castiel and the Fallen who served as his personal guards, not to mention the Iron Circle that Tristan had already prepared to be deployed given their status as automata.
It would be easy enough to destroy the moon from orbit but so long as their men were close to their landing site no-one wanted to leave them behind, not even Tristan despite his enmity shared with Levente. As his automata tried to hold back the creatures he found them continuously beat back one after another, each being no more capable than a standard Skitarii and thus unable to deal with fusions of fungal monsters the size of a Tyranid Carnifex.
Despite the Warsmith's overwhelming personal power and his retinue burning through the Ak'Haireth like butter it still took them close to an hour to reach the mine that Levente had entered, orbital bombardments opening the pathway for them to reach it only for more monsters to burst up from beneath the surface where others had fallen. When they did reach the mines to determine whether their brothers were safe they found Levente still engaged in combat alongside Gunnar, Dominicus, and twenty-two more of the forty Astartes he brought with him to the moon's surface all fighting tooth-and-nail against the hordes of beasts converging on their points.
They had long since run out of ammo and so were forced to engage them in close combat, a specialty of Levente's men but still a trying task when their enemies ranged from the strength of an Astarte when mutated from a single Human or the might of a Carnifex from those formed from multiple melded together. It was then that some of them had fallen, but it was evident by the Ak'Haireth corpses surrounding Levente that he had slain literal thousands in the span of time it took to be found. Fighting furiously and with righteous fervor, Levente was actually pressing the monsters back in the area he was engaged against them, their occasional strikes against him seemingly not felt in the slightest as he beat them into explosions of spores and hacked through the next one in the way of his rampage.
Jarn had to drag Levente away from the battlefield as his Triarch member sought to avenge the fallen with his own two hands, and while not likely those who witnessed him were left to wonder if Levente could have wiped them all out given enough time to do so such was his fury. With Quidel's flames paving the way for their retreat they were able to fall back and reach their evacuation site, though the Ak'Haireth were intelligent enough to realize that their ships were a way to infect far more prey.
A surge of the Xenos rushed at the ships as each Astarte was bathed in flames just long enough to kill any spores on their Power Armor, resulting burns ignored in favor of precaution. The purging of the spores was also aided by a rapidly concocted virus made by Richter who had the records of how the Alpha Legion purged the Ak'Haireth thanks to Alpharius' presence in their fleet for so long, and so while the Astartes fought off the monsters preventing their departure the virus was sprayed by the Apothecary out with a repurposed flamer Tristan provided him.
Tristan had been making certain to shoot down any craft launching from the moon to prevent the spread of this foul abomination of a Xenos species be it intentional or not, sacrificing those few civilians who may have genuinely escaped if it meant even the slightest chance that the Ak'Haireth would survive. He also had his crew preparing cleansing protocols to make certain that everyone who returned was not somehow still carrying the fungus, all the while anxiously awaiting the return of his Warsmith and fellow Astartes.
The ground forces managed to drive off the Ak'Haireth enough to take off safely, though it did not come without a cost: as they were shutting their doors one of the Ak'Haireth had grabbed Dominicus who had been aiding Quidel in laying down covering fire for the last of the retreating Astartes. The attack did not kill Dominicus outright, but it tore through his leg's armor and the infection took root. Seeing his former Alpha Squad teammate in this condition shocked Quidel enough to pause as Dominicus fell down as his leg no longer became his own.
Their Warsmith however wasted no time.
"My lord...Warsmith..." Dominicus painfully choked out as his body half rested on the escape ship, his arms struggling to hold himself up with the Ak'Haireth still gripping him. Quidel recovered and burned the creature to death, but as he did a gunshot rendered the act moot: Dominicus' lifeless body fell from their vessel and the door shut behind him, Jarn wordlessly taking his place within the ship afterwards and making certain that everyone else was safe from the infection.
As soon as the Iron Legion left E-Epsilon it was subjected to immediate Exterminatus, the moon being erased from existence down to its smallest pieces by the combined firepower of their fleet. Thanks to the filtration systems implemented in years past and the quarantine process put into place in reaction to the Ak'Haireth none of the foul Xenos managed to escape from the moon's fate, but nineteen Astartes had lost their lives in the process. Tristan was left thinking to himself how many thousands of innocent lives he just took even if it was justified, and as he stood aboard the Eisernen's bridge he found himself tuned out from the status reports Captain Turner was giving him.
Levente was not blamed for the incident, for all scans had shown no such activity upon the moon until it was too late, and he had been acting with the Warsmith's blessing against a seemingly undefended moon. He was not expected to be clairvoyant, but that meant little to Levente as he stewed over the loss of his men.
To sacrifice lives for their objectives was what it meant to be an Iron Warrior in his mind, but those men had died for nothing, and so he swore to himself that he would Chaos pay for twisting that Xenos species into something so foul as to claim the life of his men.
This drive would be the cause behind another fatal encounter for the members of the Iron legion, one which would end in victory but almost cost the lives of many more.
"War is an imperfect thing, and thus so long as it exists utopia cannot be achieved. To bring an end to war we must fight until none stand against us: that is your purpose. Blood must be shed if we are to achieve our ideals."
"Tristan carries another burden in bringing utopia to reality: he is the one to build it from the ashes. With his mind we can achieve it, but reaching that point will be difficult without someone like you to carve the path. We eliminated another tool of Chaos today, and so even with a handful of our brothers lost we have bettered the future. It is regrettable, but this universe we live in is cruel to the last. Keep that in mind if you wish to survive long enough to see our vision, learn from your mistakes today and move forward."
When the Warsmith had spoken to Levente in the Triarch's room following the conflict it had been like a stern father who acknowledged the mistakes made by their child but still talked with him at length about how to better himself and not make those mistakes in the future. Levente had been left with a storm of emotions following the engagement both due to his own reckless errors and also how his men had perished because the only backup they had from the fleet had been a handful of automata. How many of his men could have escaped if they had Astartes at their back rather than Tristan's tepid and cautious deployment of mere machines?
At the same time Levente could not help but recognize the fact that Tristan had not immediately purged the world with Levente and his soldiers upon it, as he would have entirely been within his rights to do so under the circumstances. He took a major risk in giving them time to be recovered and for that Levente was wholly grateful as much as he hated to admit it, but Tristan's taciturn and stoic nature did not give an ample opportunity to share such sentiments. Levente sensed resentment from his fellow Triarch for the loss of Dominicus and the other Astartes on the moon, but Tristan withheld making any comments on the subject because not even his scans had revealed the Xenos presence until it was too late.
Left without much recourse except to accept his first true 'loss' as a Triarch, even one which saw the annihilation of a major threat as the Warsmith noted, Levente threw himself back into his training both physical and mental. He spent days on end within the Dodekatheon contemplating tactical deployments and engagements that they might be expected to undergo in the coming months and years, and in doing so he turned his attention to the Chaos bastards who always seemed to be a step behind them. It was as if they could sense where the Iron Warriors were to some degree, and having experienced that Daemon Prince Palamedes' obsession with Tristan firsthand Levente was fairly certain that there might be some connection there.
Based on this hunch Levente assigned a commando team led by Gunnar to shadow the Word Bearers and report back anything of note they might find, their goal being to locate a moment of weakness within the Word Bearers' fleet deployments. This plan would utilize the occasional aggressive deployments made by members of Palamedes' fleet whose minds were lost in the blood fugue of Khorne, using their actions to create avenues into tracking the fleet and utilizing temporary blindspots created in their formations to remain undetected. With their attention focused on the Iron Legion's fleet and also various Imperial worlds laid asunder the Word Bearers were not expecting a small infiltration force to tail them, and so Gunnar's team would prove successful almost immediately thereafter.
With reports and information provided by the Astartes he sent after the Word Bearers Levente was able to discover where Palamedes' present base of operations was: a conquered Imperial world named Acgeye that had been won over to the side of Chaos through his agents who corrupted its leadership and institutions. The Imperium had not yet reacted to this loss, if the decayed entity was aware of Acgeye's loss at all yet, and so Palamedes had been able to turn the industrialized world into a forward base of operations for his warband within the material realm. Like the Iron Legion's shipyards the planet would provide Palamedes' forces a way to convert their pilfered goods into tools to fuel their war machine, and Acgeye's large population provided them ample servants to call upon.
In their greed however the Word Bearers had left only a portion of their overall armada at Acgeye while using the existing infrastructure and defenses of the former Imperial world to protect it. With all of Acgeye's defenses standard issue but held in bulk it could repel most forces that came at it, but what it could not handle were Astartes who held blueprints of Imperial defenses and architecture and studied them relentlessly to improve their tactics against them. In this way Levente was able to devise a shock assault that was designed to eliminate not only the Word Bearers' production facilities worldwide but also decapitate the leadership left to overlook the planet in Palamedes' absence and thus deprive him of valuable subordinates.
The Word Bearers' supply lines all tied back to this point, and so disrupting them here could cause their entire operation to fall apart: their more aggressive actions would eventually be noticed by the Imperium, and a disordered fleet would stand little chance against the weight of the Imperium's might when it caught up to them. For this reason Jarn assented to Levente's planned operation which saw the entire Iron Legion redeploy to Acgeye and deploy its forces en-masse, exploiting saboteurs and sappers ahead of time to open the pathway to the suddenly vulnerable World Bearer bastion.
The operation was a time-sensitive one as the Word Bearers' many tendrils could return at any moment from their various deployments, but there was a distinct moment of weakness present and so it was seized. Dealing a crippling blow to Palamedes' forces would leave the Iron Legion freer to pursue its own agendas, as even if it would mean future retaliation by then the Iron Legion would hopefully have conquered Kimara and insulated itself from outside attack. There were no assurances in their line of work and so an opportunity presented such as this was one to be taken even if there were risks involved, and measures were taken by Tristan to allow for a hasty withdrawal if necessary.
After sabotaging the Word Bearers' defenses their fleet rapidly wiped out the modest orbital structures of Acgeye and dropping their remnants like meteors down to the planet below. Millions would die from the aftermath of their orbital bases crashing into the planet, but their population had willingly fallen to Chaos and so there was no mercy to be found within the Iron Legion for them. During the upheaval caused by this the path was made for the Iron Warriors to make landfall, their fleet engaging the Word Bearer vessels still in orbit after their initial blitz targeting their bases.
Levente led the charge on Acgeye while Tristan organized their forces as they landed to ensure cohesion, their first forces to touch down securing the landing of the second wave that held their armor that would breakthrough the scrambling defenders. At the back the Basilisks led by Tristan's forces began bombardment of the massive Fortress City that Palamedes' forces held as the capital of their conquered world while Levente led a force of Vindicators and Razorbacks that surged forward utilizing the chaos sewn to their advantage, Levente's own personal vehicle The Hammer, a personalized Vindicator of his own design that sacrificed some of its ammo capacity to instead allow for it to hold Levente and four other Astartes.
The Vindicator was known as a superb short-range siege vehicle thanks to its demolisher cannon that fired enormous rocket-assisted shells that allowed it to break through layers of concrete and plasteel alike. Depending on the ammunition utilized a demolisher cannon's shell could possess an outer layer of explosive and shrapnel surrounding a chemical core. When the shell struck the layer of explosive would detonate to punch through the target's armor before spreading shrapnel from the point of impact. This process would start a chemical reaction to the shell's core which would see it become superheated and lance through the damaged armor, allowing the demolisher shell to inflict damage over a wide area while gutting the target initially struck from the inside-out. The Vindicator only had a range of around a kilometer, with its accuracy quite poor the further it had to aim, making it ideal for city and fortress based engagements where it could wade into enemy fire with its reinforced armor and fire at immobile structures.
The siege shells used by many Demolishers however was special thanks to possessing an armor-piercing tip, a heavy casing, and an explosive charge that would allow it to penetrate its target before detonating inside of it. This combination could flatten defenses in a single shot or at the least wipe out those within, with further shots expanding upon the wreckage caused and a convergence of Vindicators firing together leaving nothing but fragments of their chosen prey. The Hammer was further modified to help coordinate such attacks between its fellow Vindicators, firing while advancing ever forward in a methodical way to break their enemy before reaching them. Once there their support Razorbacks armed with smaller arms weapons such as Assault Cannons and Heavy Bolters would deploy their Astartes payloads and grant cover fire as the Astartes breached the walls and buildings holding them back from their objectives.
While the outer layers of defenses were cracked Tristan continued to bombard their foes from beyond their retaliation range, destroying targets that would impede the advance of Levente's forces while also applying pressure to reinforcements to not attack from their flank. This drew reinforcements to Tristan instead, but the Warsmith met them in battle with his own dedicated forces which meant that none were yet capable of even reaching the artillery line formed. Despite their petty rivalry both Levente and Tristan were a force to be reckoned with working together just as the Warsmith had envisioned, with Levente's rapid assault tactics dealing intense and precision damage to their foes while Tristan's bombardment kept their enemies suppressed and crippled whatever might pose a threat to Levente's forces before it could do so.
As he broke through enemy lines composed of cultists dedicated to their Chaos overlords Levente could not help but feel in his element: this was what it meant to be an Astarte, to wage war and carve a path through your enemies before they could even truly respond. The blood of innumerable cultists spilled over his blades as Levente led the charge from the front, the shine of his armor now dulled by coats of his foes' innards as he ruthlessly hacked through one after another. That these mere mortal servants dared try and face him was an affront to Levente, and so he took pleasure out of cutting them down and showing them the folly of their ways.
Their Astartes masters stood little more chance against the unrelenting tide of blows Levente reigned down upon the various Word Bearers he came across, his natural speed more than a match for whatever gifts they were granted by the Ruinous Powers. With a swing of his Power Maul and a simultaneous slash of the Iron Brand two more aspiring champions of Chaos fell, their Power Armor unable to withstand the high quality weapons Levente brought with him. Palamedes' forces still possessed the common issue of Heretic Astartes in that their equipment was degraded from time and battle, and so while capable of taking hits from most threats their defenses were paltry in the face of weapons honed and engineered over centuries to their potential.
The unending tide of cultists was no issue to Levente as supported by The Hammer, Gunnar, and the other Astartes he hand-picked to battle alongside him. For every ten they cut down or obliterated with the Demolisher Cannon another twenty would seem to take their place, but those twenty would then be slaughtered with brutal efficiency such that when forty more took their place Levente's team was already ready for them and relentlessly continued their march forward as more Iron Warriors followed in behind them.
Some mutated cultists and Astartes posed a greater threat and could even inflict a degree of damage upon them, but the Terminator armor Levente wore was made to absorb frontal attacks in particular. If not for his short stature and his armor being tailored to him he could likely not have fit within his own personal transport carrier but his raw power afforded by his broad frame let him trample through his foes and their barricades like a one-man stampede. Some cultists who had barricaded an entryway to slow the Iron Warriors heading their way were shocked when Levente simply tackled through the reinforced gate with enough force to kill some of their number outright when it broke off and hurtled across their structure. Whatever fearful awe they possessed at his strength was ended immediately thereafter when their skulls and torsos were caved in by a Power Maul.
Levente's armored spearhead was having its intended effect and in short order their assault had crippled much of the Fortress City's structures, leaving its inner sanctum vulnerable where hordes of Astartes and their mortal followers lay in wait for their attackers. Leading the Word Bearers were two of his top followers Maliq and Rohkeus, each holding the title of Prophet and equivalent in rank to the Triarchs possessed by Jarn with similar influence. Within their forces there were eight such individuals ranked from First to Eighth, as per Khorne's favored number, and of which the devoutly religious servants of Khorne were led by the First Prophet Palamedes.
The Second Prophet of Khorne was Maliq, the former leader of their Warband back when it was only a splinter force belonging to the overall influence of Erebus. When Palamedes was but a mere mortal rising throughout their ranks he had led them on many expeditions into the Imperium's space and bled worlds dry while satiating his personal greed for whatever valuable artifacts and items they came across, offering many to the glory of Khorne but using many more to maintain his power over others. He defined himself by what he possessed, seeking to make others look upon the grandeur of his accomplishments as demonstrated by what he could flaunt before them, but this would prove his downfall. So miserly with his acquisitions was Maliq that he had gained the ire of his seven fellow prophets, and by the time Palamedes had stood among them his overpowering charisma had seen the former servant rise to the top of their warband.
Palamedes had seen fit to have Maliq become his right hand, using his talents and experience to his own ends while binding him to his will entirely: he kept a close watch on the now seething Maliq who he had dishonored, and while it was known to all that Maliq sought vengeance and to regain what had been taken from him he was kept in check. This desperation to regain his power made him a dangerous foe on the battlefield however, as there was nothing he would not risk for his desire for leadership and that made him unpredictable...exactly as Palamedes had expected when he enthralled his once superior officer.
The Seventh Prophet of Khorne Rohkeus was left behind to keep Maliq in line, being too straightforward and brutal to accept underhanded scheming on behalf of his fellow Prophet, instead being a demonstration of the meritocratic nature of their Warband: Rohkeus was a mortal servant turned tool of Khorne, a former Cultist whose valor and accomplishments on the battlefield had seen him gifted with blessings of the Blood God that had seen his form grow to many times its original bulk in raw muscle empowered by the Warp. Grotesque horns and spikes lined his body, making it just another weapon in his arsenal and one which he had repeatedly put to good usage in the name of his dark master. He might not have been an Astartes, but the countless thousands he had slain in personal combat with his sheer aggression had proven his place, especially after a duel for honor had seen him slay a previous member within the Eight Prophets and rise to their rank after the ritualistic combat.
His lifetime of combat gave way to hubris however while his desire for conflict left him as a fearsome battlefield commander, urging his forces onward into the thick of battle without any consideration to their survival. This combination saw many of the minor conflicts thus far with the Iron Legion be against his forces who possessed similar temperaments, unable to hold themselves back from the promise of slaughter, and Rohkeus himself was only kept in check by Maliq's more reserved nature. Rohkeus was always spoiling for a fight, but he could disobey Maliq's will as his superior unless it contradicted Palamedes' own. In this way he prevented Maliq from scheming against their master and Maliq prevented Rohkeus from throwing his life away in pointless battle, as Maliq knew he would be held accountable for allowing such a thing to happen while Rohkeus still held purpose as the tip of the spear in their warband's attacks.
In a plan of action that favored both of their natures neither could be found when Levente and Gunnar together broke into the inner chambers of their primary base, killing many of the Prophets' followers who lay in wait to ambush them but finding no sign of their targets...only for Levente to realize that the Prophets had access to a hidden series of tunnels beneath the planet's surface from this base outwards. Many had been caved in when they dropped the orbital defenses down upon the planet but others had remained open, allowing the Prophets to slip undetected out from the Fortress City and take their strongest followers around to attack the back of the Iron Warriors.
While the Warsmith and Tristan held back the sudden attack from a mass of mutated Astartes and their newly recruited mortal followers Levente assigned Gunnar to finish the demolition of the Fortress City and the destruction of anything of worth within it: there was no chance they could evacuate with the Word Bearers' spoils before more of Lorgar's sons returned and made conflict untenable, so it was better to raze everything to the ground than leave it for the Word Bearers to reclaim. Elsewhere their forces were similarly destroying the less defended outposts and locations of note for the Word Bearers, so if their primary fortress fell too there would be almost nothing left for them here. Many successful campaigns ruined in a single raid, it would be exactly the kind of victory Levente craved to wipe away the bitter taste of losing his men in their last engagement.
This done, Levente commandeered a Razorback in the streets mowing down cultists to rush back to their defensive lines, arriving just in time to see Tristan engaged with both Maliq and Rohkeus...and for Levente to catch sight of the suddenly returned form of Palamedes. With no new ships in orbit it was obvious that the Daemon Prince had been summoned forth with the powers of the Warp alongside a detachment of his followers including another Prophet, that being the Third Prophet of Khorne Yarost who served as his primary military adviser. Surrounding them were the corpses of a dozen Astartes from Jarn's detachment who Palamedes had carved apart with elongated claws that tore through Power Armor like wet paper, the team having been unable to even react in the slightest to his arrival before being impaled or cut to ribbons thanks to the Daemon Prince's speed.
Palamedes growled his orders to his men and formed a blade made of blood from his own body, jabbing it in the direction of the Iron Warriors and shouting that none but he could kill the one known as Tristan Bertrand as per his oath to Khorne...and that was all Levente needed to slam into the Daemon Prince and carve through him with both the Iron Brand and his personal Power Maul gifted to him by Jarn with far greater destructive properties than a typical one while its shape was crafted to be ideal for someone of Levente's stature. His Power Sword tore through the blood which comprised Palamedes' body and the maul knocked a flood of the Daemon Prince's blood away in a violent spray that would have killed any mortal outright...but he was no mere mortal.
Despite losing more blood in a single moment than others could possess in their entire body Palamedes barely appeared to notice at all, turning his wicked gaze to where Levente now stood before him and granting him a toothy grin that showed off his grisly fangs. His body had already returned to its prime shape as the blood spilled by him reformed into his mass, being drained from where it had been spilt upon the snow of this planet that was within its winter cycle. It had meant little to Levente that it was going to be winter here, but it held meaning to Palamedes even if it made his blood's return to his body just a tinge bit slower as the cold air rendered it solid.
Palamedes stood at over one and a half times Levente's height in the Terminator armor the Astarte wore for this mission and so loomed over him menacingly to gauge what Levente's reaction would be. In seeing that this was not a foe that would be terrified of him Palamedes idly recollected seeing someone like this the last time he fought Tristan, brushing Levente off as a nobody and turning his attention back to his intended target...only for Levente to forcibly drag his attention back by unleashing a flurry of blows into Palamedes' back. He refused to be overlooked for that uncharismatic bore Tristan, especially on the battlefield, and so Levente threw his full weight into each attack to knock free whatever blood he could spill to bleed this monstrosity out.
In respect for his valor Palamedes adeptly began to parry Levente's strikes one after another, finding himself actually only just able to keep up with the Triarch member despite Palamedes' own remarkable speed. There was no room for error with each strike sent his way, and if not for his regeneration this would truly be a dire battle...but instead it was a mere distraction as far as Palamedes was concerned. Within him coursed the blood of an entire planet's population, his blessing from Khorne allowing him to reshape it and control it even as it spilled from his body, as a warrior who could continually spill his own blood and that of his foe was one who could forever sate the Blood God's thirst.
Levente would have to 'kill' Palamedes enough times to wipe out a planet of Humans, and that was before factoring in that whatever blood he spilled would just be picked back up and have to be spilt again. In this way despite his offensive capabilities Levente had no effective way to finish Palamedes off, but that did not keep him from doing what he could to repeatedly beat back his larger foe through sheer strength and skill. This onslaught of strikes turned Palamedes' opinion of the Iron Warrior and made him wish that they could possess such a capable warrior for the Chaos Gods, but he could sense that this one was nigh immune to the lure of Chaos: the zeal he struck with and fury he mustered was much like that of the Black Templar, and while they did not exchange barbs Palamedes could see that he would have to kill this particular insect before it bled his manpower even more.
No longer captivated by the idea of entertaining a possible recruit, Palamedes grabbed a nearby Rhino damaged in the conflict while it brought supplies to various Basilisk emplacements. With a single hand he was capable of lifting it and twisting it towards Levente to swat him away, wishing to leave his actual death to another who could give the warrior a fitting death while Palamedes focused on Tristan...only for the Rhino's chassis to break against a solid object that had moved in the way of Levente. With Palamedes' force behind it and the sturdy nature of what was struck the already damaged Rhino split in two and tumbled out of Palamedes' grasp as the Warsmith Jarn intervened.
"Aid Tristan, Levente."
Levente, who now knew better as to the true capabilities of this opponent he faced once before, was loathe to leave his Warsmith and idol alone with Palamedes and so spoke up to object...only for Jarn to cut him off immediately.
"The Beast struck me with a Rhino: I have a score to settle."
Palamedes could not help but laugh as yet another worthy foe stood in his way, for even if he had his eyes set upon another he could not deny a challenge such as this. Levente might have been too small a fry for the leader of the Word Bearers' in the region, but a Warsmith was not something he could turn his nose up at so easily. If Jarn wished to be offered to Khorne first before his beloved student then so be it, Palamedes would grant him his wish.
Levente relented and left to assist Tristan, passing by the remains of a foe the Warsmith had caught unaware right before intercepting Palamedes' strike. The now deceased Astarte dedicated to Chaos had appeared from beneath the ground using one of their tunnels and fired upon their forces only for Jarn who provided them overwatch protection. What had been an ambush by the Astarte had instead seen their torso obliterated by Jarn's firepower, firepower now being unleashed into Palamedes' form as Jarn swung his massive maul with precision far beyond what one would expect of a man his size.
Whereas Palamedes had enjoyed testing Levente by parrying attacks he could have simply taken directly without true injury the Daemon Prince was forced to actually divert and block the swings now aimed at him if he was to make attacks of his own. Palamedes possessed greater raw strength than Jarn, but their innate toughness was similar even if Palamedes was functionally immortal with his regeneration. As such Jarn's blows that could annihilate even a Warboss of the Orks would have their effect on Palamedes and so the Daemon began to utilize his speed to compensate, flitting back and forth with his deft wings and striking the far more cumbersome Logos Secundus.
To make the most of his own powers Palamedes could not afford to wear a full suit of armor, but he did not miss being weighed down by it: now he was free to twist and reshape his body comprised entirely of blood as he saw fit, the amount of blood he possessed allowing him to put far more strength behind his strikes than foes could reasonably expect, and the explosive power afforded to him let each push of the leg or flap of his wing to move him far more than mere mortals could hope to in the same span of time. His heavy footsteps might signal his approach to others but it was a small price to pay for the blood of so many to run through him.
It was to Palamedes' surprise that the strikes he made against Jarn rapidly disappeared much like the damage Palamedes was incurring from aftershocks left by Jarn's maul and his wrist-cannons, the metal of the Logos Secundus reforming thanks to the Necrontyr technology Jarn had taken in his past and incorporated into the Logos' form to make his own variant. It was not as efficient as the Necrodermis possessed by the Necrons but Jarn possessed a deeper understanding of it than most Humans, having had to fight them and having taken their equipment for his own studies without the watchful eye of the Mechanicus to call him a heretic for daring touch such items.
Just as Palamedes' own blood returned to him along with the blood of others spilled around him Jarn's armor continued to reshape itself from its own incurred damage, nanoscarabs reforming whatever pieces were chipped away by a swing of Palamedes' blade. The durability of the Logos and the power fields within it prevented any strike from making contact with Jarn himself, Palamedes capable of breaking through the armor of a Rhino with the flick of a wrist but couldn't so much as crack Jarn's armor so readily.
It served as a good indicator for what he might have to face against Tristan, but Palamedes remained confident that he could overcome Jarn: there was no battle that could wear Palamedes out from sheer endurance, and while he was capable Jarn was still a simple Astarte at the end of the day. Eventually he would tire and things would turn to Palamedes' advantage, especially with the power he had to use to simply match the Daemon Prince's blows.
While the two commanders of the battlefield continued their duel the servants of Palamedes were engaged with Tristan and Levente, the former of whom had barely been able to keep them back thanks to Maliq's cunning strikes being combined with the sheer brutal aggression of Rohkeus. Tristan's experience with Levente gave him insight on how to parry or deter Rohkeus' attacks, but he was slow to react to both of his foes at once. While he tried to formulate the best response to one the other struck, forcing him to recalculate his approach just in time for the other Chaos worshipper to strike and continually press him back. There was simply too much data in the chaos around him for Tristan to dissect his fight and properly defend himself under his current parameters, and so he was continuously flat-footed throughout.
It was a losing engagement for Tristan alone, the other Astartes in the area doing what they could to fend off the smaller fries while Tristan took on the targets that could harm his men, and it was only thanks to Levente's appearance that he was not overwhelmed yet. Tristan had mostly escaped from taking any significant damage thanks to his shielding, but he had been fighting the two since when Levente was still in the city and so his shielding was beginning to drain from the initial ambush seeing hordes of cultists and Heretic Astartes peppering him with gunfire while their masters pummeled away at him. Tristan's defenses were always improving from iteration to iteration, but there was only so much they could take and a small army fighting him for so long was taking its toll.
Twisting one shield from behind him to slam down in front of him and strike Rohkeus' knees while fully blocking the mutated Human's strike, Tristan then turned so that he could use his other Karceri shields as a blunt weapon to bash his foe aside despite being far weaker than him. The shields of the Iron Circle had been able to take strikes from the Daemon Primarch Angron and so they were not at all threatened by Rohkeus despite his strength having been enhanced to perhaps match Jarn's own, and Tristan used this opening to finally take aim with his railgun and fire it into Maliq before the Astarte could land a hit on Levente who had been attacked from behind by more Heretics.
Maliq seemed to sense the lethal attack before it was even fired, his body tearing from where it had been right when Tristan fired and thus narrowly missing him...but killing numerous other Astartes enslaved by Chaos who had been nearby Maliq. Tristan had aimed that way suspecting his otherworldly foe empowered by Chaos might somehow avoid the hit, so he might as well surprise the Astartes behind him who were not even paying attention to him. Palamedes had stated only he was allowed to kill Tristan, and while Rohkeus seemed intent on tying him up for his master Maliq had been throwing killing blows out earlier which gave him the feeling that his foes were not all exactly a cohesive force...not surprising given their nature as wicked servants of Chaos, but something to use all the same to his advantage.
This moment also gave Tristan sight of Jarn facing off against Palamedes, the Warsmith seemingly in an endless stalemate as their blows cracked the earth around them and sent nearby soldiers reeling from the mere aftershock. Before he could contemplate the subject further Rohkeus had leapt back at him with a fierce zeal that showed he took no true damage from Tristan knocking him aside, and so Tristan shifted his physical shields and concentrated his energy shields all in front of him to block the incoming strike even if it meant some bolter and autogun rounds began to ping off his back. He would rather take a bolter round than be struck by the massive thunder hammer wielded by Rohkeus, and so he continued to play defense while Levente pressured Maliq further and further back.
In an effort to break the stalemate Palamedes changed his method of attack, extending his claws made of blood to extreme lengths and swiping them at Jarn while still striking out with his sword, seeking to pierce the Logos through a structural weak point he could locate through an increased number of strikes. Jarn was pushed back onto the defensive by this, using his Power Maul to defend his body at points instead of just twisting it in a constant stream of swings as he could tell what his foe intended. Now given a greater opportunity, Palamedes reshaped his sword into a part of his hand, then slashed outwards with it as the blood once forming the sword now extended his hand's claws further allowing him to continuously swipe with both hands with pinpoint accuracy.
From his body Palamedes formed more tendrils of blood that began to lash out at Jarn much like a mechatendril might, Jarn's own servo-arm having helped parry Palamedes before and inspiring him to add to his arsenal of limbs in an attempt to create a true opening. It was a thrilling sensation to a servant of Khorne to encounter such a worthy opponent, and Palamedes was relishing in the battle even if it was not one he intended to have on this day: he had not expected the Iron Warriors to commit this many forces and to succeed quite as fast as they did when he gave them an opening to strike, but in the end even if this world was lost it would be worth it to finally slay the final soul he pledged to Khorne...Khorne had been satisfied by the slaughter of Tristan Bertrand's entire world, but it wasn't enough for Palamedes who truly worshipped the Chaos Gods. His word was his bond, and he would not allow even one damned soul escape from his promise to his patron.
Despite not being able to land an attack for their past few trades Jarn seemed fine, any strike he did make capable of exploding much of Palamedes' body away from him and grant him a momentary advantage as the Daemon Prince's semi-liquid form reshaped to continue battle. The Warsmith's calm was intriguing to Palamedes, who rightfully assumed Jarn was up to something, but as he whipped endless tendrils of sharpened blood at his foe Palamedes could not help but question more than his intentions in this duel but overall.
"A man of your intellect must know that this farce cannot continue forever: each battle you fight, each enemy you make, will cast a shadow on your future. At some point the debt of blood you accrue will have to be paid in full, and when that happens nothing will save you or those who follow you. There is only war, from now until the last Human draws its breath."
An attack that had been meant to impale through the reinforced collar around Jarn's neck was broken and knocked aside in a spray of blood by Jarn's hammer, the Warsmith grunting in condescension as he did so.
"Vulkan was a fool."
Jarn stepped forward and took a direct hit from Palamedes' blood-claws and tendrils with the brunt of his personal shielding to swipe his hammer through Palamedes' gut, obliterating it even as the blood instantly began to reform and pool around the void he created in the monster's massive form.
"Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned? Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the darkness of the future there is only war? There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods?"
With each sentence Jarn beat Palamedes back as he continued to rely on his shielding which only grew stronger by the moment rather than weaker, as if empowered by something Palamedes had not accounted for yet in the duel. The attacks were punishing but not lethal, and it was enough to stop Palamedes constant assault if but for a moment.
"What a farce. We are the Iron Warriors, those who know no surrender, who stand unbroken even as the world around us crumbles. We are the ones who will bring an end to this cycle of endless war! Unlike those who have forgotten their Human spirit for their own ambitions we are the unbroken sons of the Great Crusade! It is by our will that Utopia shall be reached, and none shall stand in our path to the future we seek!"
With that spoken Jarn twisted his body around to build momentum as Palamedes realized that the Iron Circle had been breaking through his forces nearby and now were closing in. Their Karceri shielding grew in strength the closer they stood to one another, and with similar shields coursing through Jarn's Logos they were empowering him by their mere presence. Their powerful arsenal began to unload upon him, merely a tickle compared to his true durability, but it forced Palamedes to begin reshaping his body around expected attacks and nimbly avoiding hits entirely so he could maintain enough of his body at once to strike out at Jarn.
And then with an odd whip-like crack through the air Palamedes felt most of his torso explode in a torrential shower of blood around him, immediately convening back to him but stopping his intended lunge at Jarn. With a glance Palamedes noticed that Tristan had taken a moment from his own fight to provide covering fire for his Warsmith, also indulging in his personal grudge against Palamedes even if but for a single shot...but what had seemingly been an opportune moment to strike simply provoked the Daemon Prince.
Until now the engagement was one Palamedes was enjoying as a sport, but the Iron Circle closing in and Tristan's meddling had ruined that for him. Now, he was truly out for blood, casting aside any signs of calm in favor of lashing out with one claw to the side. His body was struck by Jarn and the Iron Circle simultaneously as he did this, but Palamedes simply pooled his body and continued pouring more and more blood into his stretching arm as he cut straight through the thick hull of a Vindicator that had returned to provide assistance to Levente.
Jarn growled as the blood of a veteran Iron Warrior named Kombuis was visibly spilt out of the gash formed in the side of the vehicle, continuing his attack and striking Palamedes as the Daemon Prince feasted upon the blood there as well as that fallen on the ground around them...but that was not Palamedes' true goal in striking the Vindicator.
He was once an Astarte as well, and Palamedes knew how to operate a Vindicator from his vast array of knowledge from countless battles.
Kombuis' Vindicator was forcibly twisted from the inside as Palamedes killed its remaining crew-member and moved its controls, something that went unnoticed by most who presumed that the Vindicator shifted due to its driver being slain mid-movement...until it pointed at Tristan and opened fire.
With Rohkeus having captured Tristan's attention again the Triarch did not see the full course of events concerning the Vindicator, nor did he expect an allied Vindicator to fire upon him. This combination of factors left Tristan's reactive shielding mostly focused on the wrong source of incoming attacks, and while his armor was capable it was not entirely impervious to damage. His overlapping shields blocked much of the impact but not all of it before the Demolisher shell meant to level buildings struck Tristan with a deafening explosion. The aftershock knocked Rohkeus away while the Logos Incrementum cracked under the impact, the shrapnel of the shell driving into the cracks formed in it and running Tristan's internal organs through wherever it then broke through his subdermal plating.
Trahaearn Jarn was a patient man. He had to be to have survived his homeworld, and it was a trait beneficial to survival as an Iron Warrior since rushing a siege was a good way to catch a bolter round. He had undergone sieges that the other Legions would never have considered or bothered with because that was his duty and such thankless work was not something he saw as beneath him. The Warsmith even would help his subordinates with routine checks when he had the time because such attention to detail was important even if the task was monotonous or long.
Waiting for Richter to finish operating on Tristan was not something Trahaearn had patience for.
Tristan's near death had seen Jarn call a full-scale retreat from Acgeye using his pupil's prepared extraction plans, deeming the damage done to the Word Bearers sufficient and the loss of yet another Triarch as unacceptable when Tristan was so necessary to his future plans. Jarn had provided Richter with everything he would need to see to Tristan's survival, but despite stabilizing him Tristan remained comatose from what he survived. Not only had he taken a Demolisher Cannon directly, Tristan had also been assaulted by the cultists commanded by the Second Prophet Maliq who seized the opportunity to have the ignorant masses steal Palamedes' kill from him.
Most of their weapons could barely find a hold in Tristan's body even through the broken sections of his personalized armor, the plating beneath his skin deterring much of it except where it too had been broken by the impact. Even so Tristan had been run through by numerous blades scrounged up by the cultists to defend their world, and even if some only just barely penetrated his body they made the shrapnel of the Demolisher Cannon worse. Still standing almost certainly because of his armor, Tristan had seemed like a pincushion of the brutal weapons thrust into his body as his thick armor absorbed most of the damage, the sight of his undying form no doubt etched on the minds the Word Bearers and Iron Warriors present.
A 'mere' Astartes who in his armor stood nearly as tall as the Daemon Prince and remained standing after such a display was enough to terrify the cultists impaling him, their fears made manifest when Tristan cut down those in front of him using the Pale Spear before he lost consciousness. Even stunned and shocked by the attack he had taken Tristan still had a fierce will to survive like the day Jarn had found him, and so it was only natural that he could spend what could have been his last moments killing depraved mortals who had forsaken their world just like the ones who had brought his world to ruination.
Levente had been furious that they retreated at a point where they could have ruined the Word Bearers hunting them once and for all, but Jarn prioritized survival over immediate victory and so recovered Tristan and signaled their forces to retreat. Maliq attempted to hold Tristan hostage against him by threatening to finish him off in his helpless state only for Jarn to call his bluff and attack Maliq before the Heretic could kill Tristan, Maliq's attempt to slash up at Tristan's throat deterred by his still-functional shielding and harmlessly grazing against his armor there.
While Tristan being in control of the Logos Incrementum allowed it to better react to certain attacks, much of its defensive capabilities were passive in nature built on the principle of redundancy, so he was fine as Jarn in a swing of his maul caved Maliq's chest in and knocked him across the field while the Iron Circle held Palamedes back from intervening. Maliq was not slain outright thanks to the powers gifted to him by Khorne like Palamedes, but it did force him to retreat to further recover from his wounds. He had thought he could feed Jarn and Tristan to Palamedes on a platter now that the tide had turned by stalling for a few moments, but Jarn's faith in Tristan had allowed him to completely ignore a threat to his person.
Roughly a hundred of the thousand Iron Warriors deployed had lost their lives in battle with many more sustaining crippling injuries, but in return they had successfully razed every important piece of Acgeye to the ground and ruined the spoils of Palamedes' recent crusades. The damage would set back the Daemon Prince immensely and invite questions to his leadership unless he could obtain a victory in its place, so the Iron Warriors would have their respite and be able to rest easy knowing that everything Palamedes had been prying off them like a vulture had been destroyed rather than left to bolster the forces of Chaos.
Their losses were still a setback however brought about by Palamedes' sudden arrival, as was the near total loss of their Vindicators that had to be left behind due to being too slow to pull back in time after the Daemon's interruption. The Vindicators unable to be recovered were destroyed by the Iron Warriors themselves to prevent them from falling into the Word Bearers' hands, but at least the Iron Legion could construct more after they finished their current projects to replace those sacrificed so their crew could catch rides on retreating Razorbacks.
With Tristan seemingly stable Richter had moved his attention to other Iron Warriors in need of aid, Tristan remaining in Ossus' old office where he had been operated on due to it being the only medical station capable of properly holding his long body. Richter was treating others in their general medical bay adjacent, but the sounds of his Apothecary work were lost on Jarn who had remained by Tristan's side. He knew rationally that his presence there would mean little to Tristan's chances of survival, but it gave him time and space to reflect without the interference of others.
Idly Jarn began to look around the room with its many cultural artifacts, his eyes in particular drawn to a painting of the Sapphire Mountains on Kimara made by Ossus despite the Apothecary not having personal experience with them. He had to have used passages and references from Kimaran sources to make it, and it certainly was beautiful to behold as a native who had seen the landscape firsthand. They finally were within reach of returning to Kimara, they only needed to finish the project that their resources had been poured into all this time. It was set for completion since years ago, but now it was finally about to come to pass.
Despite what Humanity was lost in becoming an Astarte it was a simple fact that Jarn still missed his home, and he only hoped that the Imperium had not treated it too harshly in the time since his departure.
Ossus had been unable to bring much with him on his infiltration mission alongside Asier and Urkamus Squad and would not dare risk his precious personal collection on such a journey, his office thus remaining a miniature museum awaiting his return. Most of it was of little interest to Jarn whose artistic side was more invested in building, but he did appreciate the tasteful side of his top Apothecary.
One thing that did draw Jarn's attention however was a bookcase with texts from many different worlds and cultures that Ossus had at some point come into contact with, likely having traded for them from various Iron Warriors over the years since Ossus was rarely in the field himself given his duties and when he was his attention was on preventing death rather than finding books. That was more in the domain of the Thousand Sons after all. Most of them held little interest to Jarn whose tastes remained on the mechanical and contruction plane of artistry, but perusing them while sitting beside Tristan did grant the Warsmith an interesting find.
Ossus had come into possession of some books he marked as having been from Tristan's planet, likely taken during their deployments to the surface and eventually making their way to the Apothecary's collection. Unlike other books on his shelf that were labeled by their known world those belonging to Tristan's lacked a title for the planet, as the medieval planet had been far from the point of possessing such an identity, if such a thing had not just been forgotten with the passage of time from its initial settling. Still, Ossus had put the books aside to their own place and labeled them by their relation to Tristan, along with a note explaining that they were not to be touched and were meant for Tristan's perusal when he was ready to do so.
Ignoring the note entirely, Jarn pored over the tomes for anything of possible note, only to find that they mostly covered folklore concerning various monsters and beasts present on the planet that could have been entirely fictional by nature. Of them one did manage to satisfy his curiosity however, that being a book dedicated to a being known as a 'Lich' that had been drawn in a way that reminded Jarn of the skeletal Necrontyr.
Given that Necrontyr possessed elite soldiers known as 'Lychguard' it gave Jarn more reason to observe the story told within, as even if it was nothing but a fairy tale it might possibly grant insight into a Xenos race that could stand in their way. Asier seemed quite knowledgeable about Necrontyr and had assisted Jarn in understanding some of their technology, but he was absent and so Jarn was left to carry on without his companion's insight. Whether it was Humanity applying its own terminology to the Necrontyr or if the Necrontyr happened to just possess similar terminology for their members was something Jarn hoped to one day discover, as it was quite odd he found that such similarities as Lych and Lich came about between species that until recent millennia had minimal contact with one another.
Within Jarn found a tale told not unlike the stories told on Kimara about their own folk legends, only instead of Jormungaros it was a tale about a man whose powers were such that he could raise the dead from the earth they lay within. Seemingly a Psyker, though not described as such by the author who likely had no concept for what a Psyker was, the man began his studies just as a curiosity of how to apply the talent he was born with. Aiding him was a childhood friend who lived in the same village as him, a daughter of the servants to his noble household, and whereas the young Lord was described as sickly she was spoken of in terms of exuberant life and high spirits.
With the untimely passing of his parents at a young age the Lord was left only to be alongside his servants who dutifully supported him in the years to come, all the while he possessed a personal assistant in the form of his friend who encouraged the Lord to continue learning about his magical powers as a method to subvert his poor health. It was in a twist of fate that she would perish at the cusp of adulthood while he would live on for years after, her life stripped away by the actions of outsiders belonging to a neighboring nation that had begun a surprise invasion of the Lord's homeland.
This personal tragedy would see the Lord redirect his general efforts in mastering his Psyker powers into those concerned with raising the dead, for he felt empty without his companion who had previously been his reason for living. If only he could undo the fate which befell her maybe he could feel alive again, and so he resolved himself to finding a cure for death itself. The war's outbreak provided him with ample subjects to study and learn from with his experiments, though answers into the truth beyond death eluded him for years of tireless effort. A new passion had gripped him, and when eventually his manor came under siege he had no time to spare for the invaders whose armies had taken his companion from him years prior.
Graves surrounded the former noble household for miles to come thanks to the invasion spreading death and disease, and to protect the preserved corpse of his friend the Lord called the dead to rise. His efforts and studies had not gone without fruit, and whereas he once was only able to command a single corpse he now could call forth the hundreds in his surroundings all at once. The secret to bringing them back to true life and retaining their souls and personalities remained a mystery, but he needed more time if he was to unlock such secrets and so he wiped out all who dared to intrude upon his decaying abode without mercy. Legions of the foreign soldiers fell in moments as from beneath them skeletons and decayed corpses rose up and dragged them down to join them in death, an event which would see the war break and peace be re-established as the few who survived fled to tell tale of what the noble's nation was seemingly capable of.
This act had not been without cost to the Lord however, as his frail constitution failed him and illness nearly took him in the days after. Should he have been struck down then perhaps he never would have risen, but his faithful servants came through for him. With their ages being considerably older than the young Lord's many have fallen ill and would have perished over the years, but rather than allow them to leave him as well the Lord saw fit to extend their life through 'undeath'. Rather than true death, their bodies remained in a form of stasis, functioning similar to how they had in life without truly perishing. Through years of practicing such noble yet ignoble acts upon those around him the Lord was able to do the same to himself, at which point his magical powers expanded in an unexpected fashion: whereas in life he had been unintentionally draining those around him to sustain his weak form, in death he was able to do the same via the dead.
By taking the life essence of those who had departed the Lord was able to further his magical talents, though by doing so he rendered their remains without any vitality to bring them to 'life'. Even so this discovery aided the Lord in his research by empowering him to conjure more powerful spells and forms of magic, though the timing of it could not have been worse. Word spread of his summoning of the dead to defend his manor, and while it was credited with ending the war those of his own nation felt unease at the thought of some powerful necromancer rising within their kingdom. Their church saw fit to condemn his actions and practices as a necromancer, a term he would then be known as for a time by many since those who knew of his name had been among the dead, and so to allegedly carry out the will of God they marched upon his home with their holiest of knights.
Attempts to explain himself left the Necromancer at the mercy of the knights, who he would have submit to due to holding no true malice towards them until they used his attempt to parlay to slaughter his servants. Now without anyone he had ever known left to him in the world the Necromancer lost much of his connection to his humanity, and without a word slaughtered the knights present with dark energies and ice magic he had come to possess from his growing psychic potential. With the death of the Church's knights came a direct proclamation of war between his kingdom and the Necromancer, and whereas once he would have been horrified by the prospect now he held nothing but contempt for the living: if they would stand in the way of his attempts to fix death itself then they were deserving of it. After all, if he was truly successful in learning the secrets to reviving the dead, then all those he killed now could be returned to life could they not?
With this in mind skeletons marched against soldiers and slaughtered them to the last man, those who willingly fought being turned into further undead or having their powers drained by the Necromancer so he could raise larger forces to protect him. The countless dead around his home that once were his townsfolk were soon raised to march onward and slaughter the cities that sent the soldiers to kill the Necromancer, the innocents slain just more souls he would have to return once he had assured his survival and perfected his craft. Hundreds turned into thousands, and eventually an entire region of his former kingdom fell under the Necromancer's influence. He still only sought to bring back those he had lost, hoping to one day be reunited with his family, his friend, and his retainers, but increasing numbers of his former countrymen stood against him and that goal.
Despite his power growing exponentially in this time from the dead whose essence he consumed the Necromancer remained unable to truly revive the dead, testing it on unimportant subjects so he could see if it was possible before trying it on those he could not afford to fail with. In response to his wiping out several cities assassins were sent to take him out without contributing to his overall hordes of undead, and in this way the Necromancer nearly met his end. If he had not been so focused on using his studies to ensure his own continued survival to thus further study he would have met his end to any number of blades, but instead the Necromancer was resolute in surviving until he could be rejoined by those lost to their cruel fates.
With magic sustaining him and granting him a vitality far beyond what was possible for Humans to possess the Necromancer decided to consume the power of his exponentially growing undead army, suddenly possess power enough to directly control his very own soul. It had only been a theory at the time, but he had believed that since the soul had to reside in a vessel he could create an object that would protect it even in the case of his (im)mortal form falling in some battle. Called a Phylactery, he crafted this wonderous magical item that would hold his soul such that it would not be drawn to the afterlife even if he sustained damage.
Reckless in his pursuit of knowledge, the Necromancer approached the armies closing in on him and fought them...and perished. Many of those assailing him fell in battle, but the Kingdom of the living had seemingly reigned victorious. They paraded their victory, celebrated their success, and mourned those they lost to the foul sorcerer who plagued the land...but none dared enter his home for the dark aura of foul magic still surrounded it, and if they had they would have known that he had been rejuvenated there. Now believed dead, he was free to continue his search for knowledge for years without incident, and the Necromancer felt his knowledge of his arcane studies growing with each cadaver he experimented with.
This era of peace would come to an end when a group of adventurous braggarts sought to enter the dark Necromancer's home to prove their bravery, upon which they discovered to their horror corpses in various states of undeath as well as the gaunt man in control of them. Having been undead for many years, the Necromancer possessed a pale skintone even as his body remained otherwise preserved from the effects of death and it gave him an even more intimidating presence than the aura of screaming souls he possessed. When one of the adventurers managed to escape the ensuing slaughter some would speculate that they were allowed to run, for that way others might come and offer themselves up to the ghoul within.
Word spread quickly and the prospect of facing the Necromancer once again was so daunting to the kingdom that it sought the aid of neighboring countries, for should its people fall their corpses would be risen perhaps to invade those lands as well. Out of collective fear two other countries joined in militarily and a third monetarily in the effort to destroy this Necromancer, now called a 'Lich' given his advanced form of undeath. Thousands of brave men armed with the most capable gear they could be given by their countries marched forth to battle together, but it was too late. When they arrived their souls were ripped from their bodies by the waiting Lich, crushed outright by dark magic, transformed into the undead without ever having perished, and others were frozen to death by blizzards summoned as if from a whim.
The countries to have endangered the Lich and his still preserved companion were soon wiped off the face of the continent by their own soldiers sent back to them, after which countless were sacrificed to further empower the Lich in his pursuit of life. Blessed with an immortal form that few could hope to injure he was left with seemingly all the time in the world, and with entire nations of bodies to learn from his goal was all but in the palm of his hand...or so he thought.
Decades and centuries passed by in the blink of an eye, the Lich single-mindedly devoted to feeling the warmth he once experienced as a Human being, only for the secret to life remaining outside of his grasp eternally. He had been able to bind and control his own soul, but precise control of those belonging to others remained ever outside his grip. Tales of the Lich would be spread throughout the world in the time to pass, but sightings of him or his undead would become ever scarcer as time went on and he became withdrawn.
Some spoke of how he came to realize through his research that there was no cure for death, that he could never return the dead to life with the powers he possessed, and that with his sole attachment to this world gone he simply drifted off into the afterlife. Others claim that he continued his dark machinations to this day, forever bound by his love for those now gone and only waiting for the right moment to make himself known again when sacrifices were called upon.
Finishing the tale, Jarn thought to the 'Phylactery' he used in his armor that was quite different in concept to the soulbound object in the story. The Necrontyr technology utilized nanoscarabs to seemingly knit their Necrodermis back together when it was damaged, or 'Living Metal' as some called it. Jarn had managed to repurpose one such relic to repair his armor, and it was something he was proud of given that most of his accomplishments were on the battlefield rather than mechanical in nature. His personal 'Phylactery', the Logos Secundus, and the vessel being constructed at their shipyard were what he hoped future generations would know him for beyond just his surname and battlefield accomplishments. He was an Iron Warrior at heart and so the Warsmith enjoyed building more than he did destroying things, but the latter was something he was talented at and was required to do so the former could be done.
Still, the story told by Tristan's civilization gave Jarn an idea, as it was likely Tristan had heard stories such as this growing up and would be familiar with the concept. It would require a lot of resources, valuable ones in particular, but Tristan had mined entire worlds for their fleet and so deserved it if it meant he could live on and further contribute to their ideals. The Phylactery in the story actually sounded more like an Eldar's Spirit Stone, and fortunately Asier knew a Drukhari who was meddling with such matters...the man who called himself Alpharius claimed that in return for other services the Drukhari craftsman had made an altered Spirit Stone using both Drukhari and Aeldari technology that could bond a Human's soul upon their passing, preventing it from passing on to the Warp and also allowing for their hypothetical revival by said Drukhari's Haemonculi allies.
Jarn knew better than to trust a Drukhari at his word, but he trusted Asier with his life, especially since Asier had acquired a handful of such specialized stones for the purpose of preserving the Jarn dynasty. According to Asier the cult of personality held by the Jarn family on Kimara would prove invaluable for the formation of their renewed Imperium, as that was not loyalty that could be readily subverted or destroyed even in the face of immense strife. Asier spoke to being unable to presently give them to Jarn's kin on Kimara, but promised he would when able and so Trahaearn accepted what he was told since to question Asier at this point would be to undermine their entire relationship. There were just some things Jarn knew Asier could not say to him and in fact asked him not to, and that was for the best.
It did make Jarn wonder what seeing his kin would be like though, and if they would in any way resemble him and his family from so many eons ago. It was an idle thought of an old man who longed for family, though fortunately his other project with Asier would ensure that their men would not suffer such pangs of familial loss.
The Warsmith was not about to test the Spirit Stone entrusted to him, but it did figure into his idea about Tristan. Given that there was almost certainly going to be a time that Jarn could not step in and aid Tristan against Palamedes it made sense to prepare Tristan for the worst, and so Jarn went to his personal workshop and began work.
Days went by before he was finished, but once he was Jarn felt proud in this new creation of his that built off the work he did with the Logos Secundus. It took convincing for Richter to allow him to implant the bionic heart Jarn had crafted, but Ossus' student eventually relented when he realized that there would be no stopping Tristan from facing dangerous foes and thus anything that could protect his former squad member was welcome even if it was experimental. Tristan was already half-dead after all, so perhaps implanting something that could hold onto his soul would help keep it inside of his body instead of allowing it to fly off and join the Emperor. It was a miracle Tristan was alive by the apothecary's approximation, but having known Tristan for over half a century Richter also knew better than to be surprised.
The surgery was successful and Jarn finally laid down to rest for the first time in days, Arien laying beside him and leaning his soft forehead against Jarn's abdomen. That spot had been one where Palamedes had left a fairly sizable bruise on him, but Jarn was so used to aches and pain after centuries of conflict that it did not bother him in the slightest. If anything having his animal companion of all these years gently touch it helped massage it, even if it was just an accident on part of the oblivious Ixolotl.
When Jarn woke he found Arien sitting at his desk eating ice cream pawned off of random spare pieces of Jarn's newest creation left around, and while he could get mad he knew what vending machine his pet always went to with his things. Arien had done well by him all this time and had been useful while constructing Tristan's bionic heart to replace the secondary heart lost to shrapnel, so he deserved to enjoy the fruit of his labor.
Tristan however was not at Ossus' office when Jarn went to check on how he was reacting to the bionic implant, prompting Jarn to sigh and wonder whether Arien was his most obedient student. Richter would have left Tristan instructions not to leave, and there was no way he was discharged, so his willful pupil was off likely making his injuries reopen out of some misplaced sense of duty.
Jarn knew where his student would be at a time like this, and so made his way over to the Dodekatheon to find the missing Astarte. Surely enough Tristan was immediately visible at his workstation within with his myriad of projects lined around him in their various states of completion or improvement. Tristan's pale white body was illuminated by the light flashing off the Logos Incrementum as he worked on remaking it after its near destruction in the previous battle, it being obvious by Tristan's intense focus and concentration that he was intent on rectifying whatever 'flaws' existed in its design to allow him to have been nearly slain outright by friendly-fire. Even as he worked though it was obvious he was in poor condition as his body ever so slightly trembled, a sign of intense pain and/or exhaustion on the part of the stoic man.
And a man he was now, something made more evident by Tristan's lack of clothing above the waist. Scars and muscle lined his incredibly thin form for an Astarte, but having helped train him Jarn knew firsthand that despite looking relatively fragile Tristan was instead built solid. Lanky limbs afforded him incredible reach in battle, and while he was no stronger than the average Astarte for his mass he had more mass to him. Whereas Levente was strong ever for one with mountains of muscle, Tristan was merely average for a giant: he could deal damage with the advantages afforded by his height alone, and most importantly it granted him an intimidation factor against lesser foes to be many times their size.
Jet black hair messily cascaded down from Tristan's head, its length such that it rested beneath his shoulders and had to occasionally be moved out of his way. Wearing his hair long was just one of a few symbols of his past as a knight's son, the other most prominent one being the only ascetic decision on the Logos Incrementum being his family's sigil being emblazoned upon it. His work was a thing of beauty to a craftsman and it was no doubt that his father would have been proud, just as Jarn was now, but it stood in contrast to the many scars lining Tristan's body from his tendency to take hits rather than avoid them. Tristan had managed to keep his face essentially undamaged, but his torso definitely was worse for wear even before his recent injuries and surgery saw him cut open yet again.
Mechatendrils fastened to a harness on Tristan's back aided him in his work, it being near seamless despite his physical suffering as he tirelessly sought to improve upon his armor's most recent iteration. One limb of the Iron Kraken was not working, however, as it was instead dedicated to occasionally tapping the Akran hanging from a miniature greenhouse Tristan made for his station. By touching it gently every so often the Akran would rock back and forth in a way that seemed to please the flora while also satiating Tristan's obsessive compulsive tendencies that saw him at times go mentally blank when for some reason or another what he was looking for was not where it should be. Everything had a place it needed to be for him to work unimpeded, and when something altered that he was never pleased even if it was as simple as his Akran no longer serving as a metronome by moving back and forth.
In the area around Tristan were various automata that reminded Jarn of his own, as the Iron Circle had been brutalized by Palamedes when attempting to hold him back and would require extensive repairs before he could field them again. Tristan had survived though as had the majority of their men, so his personal guards had done their job, especially since most of Castiel's forces had been left behind to man the fleet in Tristan's place during the invasion. The Fallen they had joined forces with had extensive experience with commanding fleets so while they were 'guests' on paper their fervent loyalty was repaid with such trust at times, showing them to be allies in full despite their different Legions.
First among the automata present were skeletal humanoids designed with a compact form that saw them resistant to damage while also low in material cost. In functionality and capability they were akin to Skitarii but lacking the independent thought of the 'Tech-Guard' of the Mechanicus who while subservient still possessed individual thought unlike Servitors. Without direction these automata possessed severely reduced combat performance, but their minimalist and efficient construction made them an ideal soldier for attrition warfare.
So long as their casualties were recovered they could be either repaired to functionality or scrapped to form new automata in their place, their general lack of complexity in their wiring and programming meaning even their internal systems were expendable. It was a simple and practical solution to the primary issue faced by Iron Warriors who lacked access to reliable means of replacing their losses and thus a solution to the gradual bleeding of talent the Iron Legion was faced with. These automata were ill-equipped for tasks more complex than wading into enemy gunfire and holding ground, but other forces could handle the complexities of battle that they could not and their overseers on the battlefield also could provide more precise direction if absolutely necessary.
Another experimental automata built by Tristan was one inspired by life mostly spent aboard the Eisernen for he was not the only one to benefit from technology taken from Necromunda and examples of it could be found with the Mithril Dragoon and their families. Having seen a Cyber-Mastiff, also known as Kill-Dogs and Razorfangs, belonging to one such family it gave Tristan the idea to upscale the mechanical creation into a weapon of war rather than just population control. Typically used by Arbites to assist in their law enforcement, the Cyber-Mastiff greatly ranged in form and degree of mechanical components with some merely being enhanced flesh and blood creatures while yet others were machines with a central nervous system derived from such an animal.
Given the short lifespan of canines compared to Humans and especially Astartes the former held little interest to Tristan, but granting a loyal animal companion nigh eternal life by mechanizing them held appeal. With this driving principle he began by studying the methods of implanting an animal's central nervous system and mind into their now mechanical form, his aim being to ensure that the creatures did not suffer, react poorly to this change, or lose their prior attachments and bonds to their owners. It would be pointless to undergo such a practice if the end result was a vicious snarling beast with no relation to its former self, and so by ensuring such degradation and issues did not arise Tristan ensured that the ends were not tainted by the means.
After successfully mastering the process to ensure that canine companions could be nigh-immortalized through machinery Tristan began work on more practical measures in the eyes of an Astarte: how to properly utilize them for warfare. If the Loyalist 'Space Wolves', a term Tristan found odd appreciation for given how straightforward it was, could go into battle with their own canine companions then he saw no reason the Iron Warriors could not as well with proper mechanical input. While initial models were only moderately larger than the average wolf or larger domestic canine eventually Tristan's propensity to tinker and improve everything he worked on to its logical endpoint saw the creation of far larger metal beasts.
It was for this reason that Jarn noted a resting 'Iron Wolf', an allegedly placeholder name given by Tristan that Jarn had little doubt his creatively devoid pupil would end up keeping, with the overall mass of a Predator tank albeit with a narrow profile. Atop its back was a cannon emplacement that could be fitted with various autocannons and, if Jarn knew his student as well as he thought he did, likely an Earthshaker cannon variant was in the works. What caught Tristan's attention and interest did not fade in the Astarte's mind, and so of course Tristan would find a way to turn what was once a simple endeavor into a method of delivering more firepower to the battlefield. Unlike tracked vehicles the Iron Wolves would be able to traverse difficult terrain well, and their four legs granted them superior stability as a weapon platform than Imperial Knights and even Dreadnoughts.
On paper it made sense, though Jarn could not help but feel a tinge of warm exasperation at Tristan's dedication to the art of firepower.
A similar endeavor also rested nearby in the workshop in the form of an 'Iron Scorpion' modelled after the Greater Brass Scorpions of Khorne, mimicking its name and chosen animal shape while eschewing any form of technology born from Chaos. It was a seeming point of pride and principle on Tristan's part that whatever the Dark Mechanicus and their ilk could create through their dark pacts he could create a purely mechanical version of, lacking the Warp-infused powers of their counterparts but instead lacking the twisted and destructive personalities that could result from their Daemonic origins. Like with the autocannon he recreated an approximation of as a child so too had Tristan been able to craft similar recreations of technology he encountered and studied, displaying the same kind of insight into mechanical matters that Perturabo himself had been gifted with.
That had been what led to Jarn's recruitment of the boy, but it was easy to forget Tristan's humble beginnings after all he had accomplished in the years since. While lacking the personal record on the battlefield that many others possessed his contributions to the Dodekatheon were substantial, and he would have been a ranking member of it, the Apolakron, and Kheledakos in the Great Crusade had fortune seen him join them at that time. Almost everything he worked on was based on recreating existing technology or using pieces from other machines to improve whatever it was he was focused on, and while it incurred a great material cost it meant that in under a century Tristan had already improved much of their existing equipment and vehicles beyond the performance they possessed even during the Great Crusade with the aid of the Mechanicus.
All Jarn had to do was let Tristan sit and work as he pleased, moving between projects and ideas as his mind pieced together how to improve them bit by bit in its own divergent process to others. Sometimes the result of Tristan's work would be giant mechanized animals with massive firepower comparable to tanks, Defilers, and even Greater Brass Scorpions, but in creating such things Tristan gained knowledge to better improve his work in other fields and thus their technology benefitted as a whole. With how they had strip-mined countless worlds over a century the common materials needed to fuel Tristan's work were a drop of water in an ocean, but the rarer technology and pieces had long required the aid of Asier to acquire.
Perhaps one of the most notable instances of this was Tristan's reverse-engineering of Necrontyr equipment acquired by Jarn in his battles with them in years long since past. It was not as if the Iron Legion had much to spare regarding the Xenos' technology, but Jarn had allowed Tristan access to it nonetheless out of curiosity to see what his pupil could accomplish. The complexity and advanced nature of it had made discovery slow, but through simple trial and error testing in a controlled environment Tristan had managed to extract basic information about their functionality that allowed for him to recreate it on a basic level.
Rather than understanding the technology itself he was able to understand how the Necrontyr did it, mimicking their work even if he lacked the necessary knowledge to understand all of the pieces. If in a mathematical equation the sum of variables X and Y is Z it does not quite matter if you know X, Y, or Z if you are able to put them together properly to reach the expected end, and in that way Tristan tapped into a small piece of the Necrontyr technology left over after Jarn's own experimentation prior to even discovering Tristan. While Jarn had tinkered with valuable relics taken and incorporated some of it into his revised Logos it had been the more common technology that captured Tristan's interest. It was because of this that his first 'breakthrough' into just figuring out how to mimic their technology came in crafting capsules to store items of greater size than the inside of the capsules.
The ability of the Necrontyr to warp space and time was incredible, and so while absolutely minor and insignificant compared to their ability to shift through reality efficiently storing objects was an incredible boon to the relatively backwards technological capabilities for Humans. Tristan's lack of intimate knowledge into Necrontyr systems and materials meant that the capsules he crafted held nowhere near the potential or capability as what a member of the Xenos could create, but that did not diminish his intuitive genius that made him useful to the Iron Legion beyond his duties as an Astarte.
At the present time the capsules were just under two feet in diameter and had to take the form of spheres, further reduction in their size wholly stripping them of their functionality given the materials at Tristan's disposal did not match those of the Necrontyr. Ten times the volume of the capsules themselves could be stored within, though another limitation present saw that it had to be inorganic matter which saw the capsules' usage strictly prohibited to transferring the resources they pilfered. While studying their weapons could have produced some results as well, being able to haul more resources from each conquest meant that in raw efficiency their operations had sharply increased. Tristan might not be slaying thousands of foes personally every engagement like Levente, but his losses were minimal and his material gains far greater.
Just as certain members of the Mechanicus were working to unlock the secrets of their Xenos foes so too did Jarn see the value in studying whatever technology they came across, and Tristan possessed exactly the type of mind necessary to work through such secrets. He was a former member of the Dodekatheon of Perturabo after all, the student of his favored son Forrix, and so while not as capable as Tristan the Warsmith was still far beyond the average Astarte when it came to technical matters.
Another example of Tristan's delving into Xenos technology was a series of artificial crystals born of research into their Legion's acquired Necrontyr equipment. Tristan lacked a complete understanding of the Pylons they acquired but proved himself capable with the Dodekatheon's resources to create something based upon them, once again incapable of tapping into the full potential of the mysterious crystals and components of Necrontyr technology but still through route replication accomplishing something of note.
Whereas his capsules provided the Iron Legion with better transportation methods for massive quantities of resources these 'Symbols' as he called them for their regal appearance contained within them enough energy within them to empower weapons batteries, shielding emplacements, and other such pieces of equipment that would otherwise need a stable power source. The Symbols in this way were mobile batteries that greatly surpassed a power generator of the same size and could provide energy for far longer before necessitating a new charge. For an army that focused on long campaigns and sieges being able to more efficiently field their equipment was an improvement across the board to their effectiveness and allowed them to regularly field shielding to protect their artillery rather than only being able to sparingly do so.
Simple in practice, these technological advancements had picked up the pace of their plans and Jarn was reminded of how Forrix once taught him how to efficiently manage an entire battalion of Astartes, armor, weapons, support craft, and more at once so as to create the best outcome on the battlefield. He had instilled similar values in Tristan and now saw them paying dividends, for while Tristan also worked to improve their weapons and armor he did so in simple ways that with the proper effort could be replicated by his brethren en masse. Through simple trial and error while applying the mechanical knowledge he learned under Jarn it became possible for Tristan to raise the floor of their equipment's performance as well as allowing for new ceilings to be reached on occasion, applying on principle the knowledge acquired to everything they possessed rather than hording the knowledge for himself.
While his Logos Incrementum utilized rare equipment in it, the basic premises of its components were far simpler: overlapping shield generators, ablative armor, subdermal armor implants, and actual physical shields over hardened armor. Tristan had utilized rarer materials for each of these to improve his personal protection, but more common materials could easily be substituted for a more resource-efficient version of the same armor. In this way once they had their roots settled on Kimara Jarn could foresee equipping many of their elite forces with such armor, as while it lacked certain functionality in narrow spaces it would make them nigh untouchable juggernauts on the battlefield. Tristan's own injuries only were suffered through severe effort and from weapons lesser armor would have been wholly torn apart by, proving its effectiveness by how he survived what ought to have been fatal strikes.
Jarn's smile was a cross between amusement and pride as he saw Tristan working, his Triarch member not even seemingly noticing him until he spoke.
"In some ways you remain the boy I found so many years ago."
Tristan did not deny that he remained mostly the same person he was then, even with his change into an Astarte, but he still was young in many ways and despite decades having passed was still entirely junior compared to the Warsmith, "I still have much to learn."
"Then you can begin by learning to rest properly. Your body may be that of an Astarte, but we are all Human."
"I can recover here and work. I cannot work in a medical bay."
Jarn approached him and planted a bare hand on Tristan's back, having not donned his armor after waking.
"Not every waking moment has to be spent as efficiently as possible. Rest can give way to productivity."
Tristan seemed unable to look Jarn in the eye, as if he was ashamed, though his reason for being meek in response would immediately reveal itself given Tristan's blunt nature.
"I failed. Even now I could not overcome the pawns of the one I promised to slay with my own two hands."
It was a simple thing, but sometimes with how deferential Tristan could be Jarn forgot the boy's pride. It was a blessing and a curse, and Jarn would rather his student take pride in his accomplishments than forever allow himself to be sidelined. The flipside however was that when he failed it hurt more, just like with Levente, and so Jarn decided to give Tristan advice as well.
"You possess talent, but each of us is the one who stands in our own way to improvement. We cannot improve what is around us if we do not first improve ourselves, though sometimes a helping hand is required. You never will be a duelist like Levente, Sigismund, or countless others. You will always be the slowest Astarte of our ranks, and there are countless battles that could be fought that would see you routed and torn apart without mercy while unable to properly retaliate."
Tristan finally looked up to Jarn, pausing his work to instead parse what he was saying. Sure that he had his attention, Jarn decided to pass along some wisdom Asier had shared with him about a time where Perturabo learned a lesson from Dorn despite their rivalry.
"Raw data can blind one to the truth rather than grant it. The weight of it and the burden it carries, especially if one engages with it without break or rest, will hold you back. That to achieve clarity one must step away even in the thick of combat to clear your mind and focus, to shed the extraneous and the superficial. Only then can you contemplate and reduce the immeasurable complexity of the arithmetic down to simple principles and return capable of true victory. Would you believe that such wisdom came from a man as stubborn as Rogal Dorn?"
It was immediately evident on Tristan's face that he was already discounting what was said given the source came from the fool of the infamous Iron Cage incident, but Jarn stopped his student before he could dismiss it entirely.
"To quote our Primarch, only a fool ignores the advice of a brilliant man, and only an idiot denies the good practice of an enemy. It is a lesson I have taken to heart, and like Perturabo I have found clarity where I never would have expected to find it before: by separating from the data entirely and withdrawing briefly you can feel it. Numbers have their purpose and place, but never forget that we are Human at our core, not machines: we are imperfect beings who do not function solely on logic or reason, and recognizing that will allow you to better tap into your potential."
Tristan nodded, contemplating what was said and now thinking of how to best apply it for himself. He was capable of reading the data on the battlefield and devising the perfect counters to tactics and attacks, but by observing all data it slowed him down...it would be difficult to let go of the control all the data feeding into his brain afforded him, but perhaps he could manage.
"Calculating the outcomes of battle is something a warrior must do on the field of battle moment to moment, and it is this sense of the flow that allows others such as Levente to thrive where you falter. I see it when you fight, you seek the optimal solution to each and every minutiae in combat and it keeps you from properly reacting. By the time you reach your conclusion it is often too late, or just barely in time, always leaving you on the back-foot and granting your opponent the initiative. Indecision will cost you your life, the reason does not matter. The only thing keeping you alive right now is your armor, something that is not to be ashamed of but rather built off of. So long as it is necessary for your success it will remain a crutch, but if you can learn the lesson our Primarch did I expect you will be an even more frightening combatant than you are now. Should that occur I am certain you could overcome even one such as Palamedes."
Jarn might have continued if not for Tristan suddenly falling forward to let out a cough of blood, his body not yet recovered yet already showing major signs of recovery since his surgery. Astartes were capable of even recovering from severe wounds in short order given the right conditions, but Tristan's bionic heart had been augmented to actually hasten his recovery process further. Despite getting up and working when he should be resting Tristan was actually functional, and so Jarn had faith that his new system was working as intended.
It just needed a little more testing.
"Pushing ourselves is our nature, but this once I will ask you to not do so," Jarn patted Tristan again supportively, but this time actually paid attention to what he felt when doing so. Where Jarn's hand touched he felt Tristan's Black Carapace harden ever so slightly in reaction, and thanks to Tristan's lack of clothing he could see a slight, soft grey-blue discoloration there too. More serious testing could wait, but for now Jarn felt better knowing that his student would be better prepared to face Palamedes when the Daemon next hunted him.
Tristan's coughing subsided shortly after it began with him seeming to force his body to not do so out of stubborn willpower, only to suddenly cough again twice and for his mechatendril rocking his Akran back and forth to instead 'punch' it off its perch. While possessing a relaxed personality, so too was the Akran impish like all of its species and repaid this accidental striking with a kick to Tristan's lowered head as it laid atop his desk. Where it struck Tristan's forehead the same discoloration as his shoulder appeared, and Jarn felt grateful to the odd pet Tristan kept for himself all these years for its assistance in further testing Tristan's implant.
Jarn started to help Tristan stand up, intent on bringing him to Ossus' office again whether his student wanted to or not, "You may not have even noticed yet with the pain you are in, but your secondary heart was irreparably damaged. Richter did what he was able to save you, while I was able to grant you a bionic replacement of my own making."
It was evident by Tristan adding to his body rather than replacing pieces of it that he did not care for bionics, but he was pragmatic enough to know that a mechanical second heart was superior to none at all. For this purpose he had no issue with his mentor implanting one on him, especially while he was at death's door and it may have helped his condition remain stable.
Sensing Tristan's approval, Jarn continued, "I call it the Iron Phylactery, and it has numerous components. Of course it functions as your secondary heart once did, but I have also added to it additional pieces and surrounded them all in a protective casing. Beyond its basic functionality is a modified Eldar Spirit Stone gifted by Asier to protect your soul, and a pair of micro-factories based on technology from the Cult of the Micro-Omnissiah and Necrontyr."
Tristan allowed Jarn to begin leading him towards Ossus' office, but his pained face did perk up when he realized that Jarn upgraded his total defense system in a way Tristan had not even considered.
"One micro-factory will utilize nanomachines that are connected to your blood stream, assisting in sealing your wounds and hastening your recovery. Your blood is still finite, but it will be harder for you to spill it: an important feature I felt would prove important if you truly intend to defeat a Daemon Prince of Khorne."
That went without saying as far as Tristan was concerned, willing to augment his body and armor with whatever technological means he could so long as it meant he could be the one to finish Palamedes off. His approval was evident whether he knew it or not, Jarn catching a miniscule grin on his student's lip.
"The other is connected to your nervous system, much like the Black Carapace it is also linked to. For this I utilized nanomachines made of Mithril to react to trauma reactively, moving and hardening as necessary. Just as your Black Carapace gives you a sense of control over your armor, so too does it allow you to control these nanomachines. Even unarmored you will resist most incoming damage, though you may notice that your overall agility has been further decreased."
It did not take too long for Jarn to guide Tristan to the medical wing of the Eisernen, and once there Jarn helped Tristan lay down with as little pain as possible. He cared for him and Levente like the sons he never truly got to have, and so while he had trouble displaying it at times he wanted them to be spared the pain and suffering he had endured these many years.
With Tristan now laying down Jarn took a seat beside him, "Given your rise in station it is time that we discussed details concerning our Legion's objectives and operations, but that can wait until you are fully functional. For now rest...I will bring Levente and we can share our tales from the last battle. You two may not have much in common, but I feel that you will be able to bond over millions of deceased Heretics."
Tristan turned his head and gave a nod in thanks, unable to properly speak just yet as his recovering lungs fought the urge to cough blood onto the Warsmith. By the time the Warsmith stood to retrieve Levente, Tristan finally was able to speak up.
"Thank you...for everything."
Jarn nodded his head, just grateful that he was able to hear his 'son' once again. That day would be a rare one throughout the history of Tristan and Levente's relationship where they both sat down with the Warsmith and were entirely genial throughout. For all their differences, for all the resentment they might hold towards the other, they both respected their Warsmith, and it was through the shared description of Jarn and Levente of Tristan standing after being shot by the Vindicator that he came to possess the moniker of "The Iron Lich". Even Levente could not deny that withstanding such an attack was worthy of respect especially with how it awed or terrified so many present, nor could Tristan the body count Levente mounted that day despite facing many times his number of foes.
For all the warfare that defined who they were, for a moment there was peace.
A/N: Well that was quite the endeavor to put together, but I'm glad I did! Thank you for waiting, and I hope to hear your thoughts in the comments below!
(Inb4 Nanomachines son, I swear I made Jarn and most this plot before I knew what that was)
