Chapter 34
"Trapped"
They were being hunted.
Something was stalking them as they hurried, barely on the edge of her vision even when she was looking for it, something big and built of bone and shadow. It leapt across the buildings running along the streets, like a stalking leopard, trailing them from afar - waiting for them to fall, to trip up, to make a mistake. It was Hive, that was blatantly clear, but the most Hawkmoon could tell was that it was vaguely Knight-shaped, with gnarled chitin-plated armour and a glowing soulfire green slash running down the front of its fanged helmet. It might've been carrying a Boomer, maybe, though that wasn't to say it didn't have a sword either.
Cyberwarp hadn't noticed. Few of the civilians in the streets did; there were plenty of other little horrors for everyone around them to worry about. A number of Seeders had already slammed down in the midst of the city, depositing Thrall packs en masse, and the sky was a mess of Tai foldfighters clashing with Hive Karves. The Defence Fleet above in orbit was being ripped apart by the invasion force. Hawkmoon had never seen so many Hive warships before; they outnumbered even those fielded at Osteor. No warmoons in sight - but there was an abundance of Tombcarriers to make up for it. The heavens were black with dark-shelled ships, screening Estrum off from open space.
There was no escape.
The least they could do was run to grab Nacelle and get out of the way, wait it out for the Star-Web's retaliation. Hawkmoon was already considering the local subway; the subterranean was a bad place to cross Hive, but the aboveground was presently a whole lot less safe.
And getting worse by the minute.
"Fly," Hawkmoon blurted. A flood of Thrall had crashed down one of the side alleys, tearing into everything moving with wild relish. She and Cyberwarp boosted up, transforming, and shot away - and then swerved as a swarm of Karves descended on them. The smaller Hive ships were hardly a threat individually, but in so great a number even Hawkmoon knew to avoid them. They dove to avoid the volley of soulfire rounds, swooped back down to the streets before, and a portal opened ahead. Hawkmoon veered away, Cyberwarp behind, and they transformed to hit the ground at a run, slipping past a building to take cover. A pack of Tombships roared out the green rift and started dropping troops behind them, firing heavy Void rounds all the while.
"Frag," Cyberwarp gasped, vents going wild. One of her servos rose up to her chassis. "'Moon-"
"We have to keep moving! Come on!"
They ran.
And the Knight-thing, Hawkmoon noticed, continued to follow.
It was catching up. Somehow.
They'd only reached the river - the same one from the restaurant - when it sprung its attack. Their pursuer flashed out in front of them, right over the bridge, from a soulfire-teleportation sigil - and yeah, definitely in the vein of Knight-esque Hive morphs, but bigger. Stronger. Older. Like the Warpriest - if the Warpriest changed up his colour scheme, from bruise blue and blood red to jungle green and bog brown, and simultaneously fell in love with the idea of having more horns and spikes adorning his painted bone-mail. Intimidation factor and all that. It stared at them through the glowing green slash running down the front of its fanged helmet.
Hawkmoon skidded to a stop, flung out a servo to keep Cyberwarp from running past, and transformed her other limb into a carbine. She didn't hesitate to shoot the damn beast - and the shards chipped at the thing's armour, but shattered apart like glass the very moment they hit the accursed thing's flesh.
"Splendid," the Knight gleefully growled in its own horrific language, with a dead voice made of gravel. It reached out, through a tiny portal - a wound in the fabric of reality - and began to draw something through. It looked like the hilt of a sword.
Hawkmoon burst forth with a jet of her thrusters, slammed her knee into its helm and hooked her leg around its neck as it stumbled back, activating her thrusters once more to tug it away - away from the sword and the portal to wherever it stored its stuff. There was no chance she was willingly going to have a repeat of the Warpriest fight. She rained down with her elbows as fast and hard as she could manage, right onto its head, and the Knight flailed. It tried to re-angle its massive Boomer to shoot her off, but with a savage jerk of her wings she wrenched its neck to the side, hoping to break it.
Pity the Knight seemed to be built of sterner stuff. Its vertebrae held, unfortunately, and it snatched at her leg with its free hand - massive armoured claws sinking into the plating of her calf.
"Shoot it!" Hawkmoon yelled, almost half-blinded by the sudden pain; its grip was crushingly tight, pulverizing her leg into scrap.
Cyberwarp opened fire, rounds of molten plasma hitting the Knight's chest in quick succession. The Hive creature roared and charged for her. Hawkmoon pulled it back, jamming her claws under its chin to try and force its helmet off, but the Knight just went with it - and they listed over the side of the bridge. Hawkmoon made to let go - but the Knight didn't, and it was much heavier than she was. It tugged her down after it, right into the waters below, and Hawkmoon instinctively sealed her plating around her as she splashed in.
The most disorientating part of it was remembering that she didn't have to breathe, and that she had nothing to fear from being submerged, but animal instinct was a difficult hurdle to overcome - and it went wild. Panic bloomed in her spark, prompted more by the humanisms of her misguided processor than her frame's own systems. Hawkmoon desperately lashed out, kicking at the hand all too easily dragging her down. Her own weight and material makeup worked against her - because metal didn't float, and neither did jumpships-shaped-like-people.
It only got worse when the Knight hit the bottom and started to almost climb her, fitting its Boomer under its arm to start genuinely pulling her down to get level with her. Hawkmoon kicked and kicked and kicked, and as it snagged her hip joint to viciously wrench her down, she started punching at its head. The water sapped the blows of most of their momentum. She tried jetting out via thrusters, but its claws were scrabbling at her chassis, her pauldrons, and they'd dug deep enough that she was almost sure the Knight would tear her apart through grip alone if she tried.
"I have you," the Knight snarled, its words somehow clearly carrying through the water around them to reach her audioreceptors - and scar themselves into her mind. The Hive's Royal Tongue was a foul thing.
There was a splash above. Cyberwarp. But a mighty explosion too, like a warship crashing down - somewhere else, close enough to rock the very riverbed the Knight stood on. The water around them rippled and pulled, and from up ahead Hawkmoon noticed what looked like some tidal force coming their way. It slammed into them, hard, knocking her free of the Knight - and it swept the lot of them away.
Hawkmoon stumbled out onto the sandy riverbank a few minutes later. Her claws raked through silt, looking for a grip to lever herself out, and her optics snapped around. The restaurant was nowhere to be seen. She didn't know where she was - besides still being in Ghiras-Central. She internally turned to the map she'd downloaded on arrival; a couple of miles, maybe. It was hard to tell, what with the change in perspective in relation to size, but... yeah.
She tried comming Cyberwarp, but - still jammed. Hawkmoon called out her designation. Nothing. She bowed her helm towards the very ground she was kneeling on, shuttered her optics and tried her best to stifle the frustrated scream trying to bubble out.
Then she heard splashing behind her. Hawkmoon twisted around - but something beat her to it, snagging her upper wing and flipping her about. The Knight glared at her. She tried to shoot it, transforming both servos, but it punched her once in the helm before she could get out even a single shot. The ensuing spray went wide, slicing through the nearby buildings, and the Hive grabbed her and threw her down onto the riverbank. It loomed over her, slammed one hand down on her shoulder to keep her in place, and it laid into her with the other. The first blow rebounded off her canopy, leaving cracks spiderwebbing across its surface. Hawkmoon gasped; it was the closest thing to a gut punch she'd experienced since becoming a Cybertronian.
The second shattered the glass entirely, and the pain more than redoubled - because all the broken shards of it shot inwards, cutting into her softer internals. Energon pooled in the cockpit, and Hawkmoon tried to double over, to drag her arms over to protect it. The Knight didn't care. Its third close-fisted punch crashed against the side of her helm. The hit left her reeling, optics flickering out.
The fourth knocked her straight into stasis-lock.
She onlined to complete darkness and a crushing pressure around her helm. For a moment she thought she was dead. Or blind, at least. But her wings screamed protest as they were dragged along the ground, and her pedes felt like they were kicking up sparks as they went.
No, wait, not blind or dead, the Knight was just pulling her along by her head. Hawkmoon started struggling, tried reaching for the hand clasped around her helm, but instead found her servos and forearms shackled - tied up in a length of what felt like razor-thorned chains. Those same chains dug painfully into her plating to prick out beads of energon whenever she moved.
The Knight rattled her warningly, then lifted her up - wings hitting a wall.
And then, then - pain. Pain unequaled. One of her wings-
The other was quick to follow.
Hawkmoon screamed. The Knight let go and stepped back to look over its handiwork - her, pinned up by cleavers skewered right through her wings. She struggled for a single desperate moment, and that just prompted the agony into reaching a whole new level. White-hot pain lanced right to her processor, flight-sensors going wild, and she couldn't- shecouldn'tshecouldn'tshecould't-
She could barely see through it.
They were in a room. Somewhere. Not Hive-built; it was stone, old, and the whole place was dark. Like some sort of windowless dungeon, the kind all those withered old pre-Golden Age ruins in Eurasia had. The Not-Warpriest wasn't alone, either; there was another massive Knight with it, bearing ragged lengths of cloth to streams from the back of its shoulders and wing-horn crests at the rear and side of its head. It looked at her through a glowing upside-down Y-shaped visor at the forefront of its half-helmet.
It was smiling. In a macabre sort of way - the same way age-old skeletons did.
"Honourable tribute," the new Knight rumbled.
Her captor chuckled darkly. "A trophy to spark loving war."
"Holy war."
"Only war."
"Hah!" The second Knight lifted something. It looked like a Verunlix orb - but the glass was cracked and the shadow-fox inside was cowering, curled up into a ball. "Both of them."
It tossed the orb haphazardly down the other side of the chamber before stomping out of the cell's only door, form whence a pale green light filtered in. Hawkmoon offlined her optics. Her vocalizer was shorting out; she just couldn't keep the scream going. Her wings... They'd taken her wings. Staked her up like some fallen angel, to be dinner for demons.
When she onlined her optics, the Not-Warpriest was right there. Right in front of her. It had cut open its palm with a jagged bone-knife and was dabbing its blood on the wall around her. Painting a rune. She reached for it, tried to lash at it with her claws swathed in dark, spiked chains, and the Knight leaned back.
"You are wonderful," it sighed, pleased. "Priest-bane. Your life will bring contest. You are the prize of north - and north is my Queen, indomitable in all aspects." It dabbed her forehead with the pad of its thumb - leaving behind it the wet feeling of Hive blood trickling down her faceplates, into her optics, to her lips and chin and dribbling right off.
The Knight took up its Boomer and pressed it against her broken cockpit. Hawkmoon shuddered as it rustled the shattered glass within.
"Your screams will bring a vengeful King. Brother and sister will war - and war is the only love that matters. Aiat."
It fired, right into her chassis. Heat ripped through her frame.
"Die well, automaton. Die brave."
/warning: massive frame damage detected/
/entering stasis-lock/
Hawkmoon didn't even bother fighting it.
/warning: massive frame damage detected/
/warning: major energon leak detected/
/warning: flight-sensors damaged/
/error: pain receptors malfunctioning/
Please. Yes.
/warning: major energon-lines severed/
/analysis: full-system shutdown imminent/
Now that sounded enticing.
"Wake up. Wake up, now."
Fine.
/command overridden/
/seek medical attention immediately/
Hawkmoon gasped for a breath that would not come and struggled anew. She was quick to stop, though; even with her pain receptors glitching out, the torment was too much to bear. A single whine escaped her vocalizer.
"Stay awake."
Hawkmoon onlined her optics. The lenses were stained with dried green - the Knight's blood. It painted the weakly-floating Verunlix before her in a dim emerald light.
"Cybertronian," the fox whispered. "Stay alive."
Easy for them to say.
"Or they will kill us."
Bit too late for that.
"She will kill us."
"What?" Hawkmoon croaked.
"War."
What? What were they say-
... Oh.
Scrap.
Hawkmoon offlined her optics all over again.
"You need to-"
"I heard... I heard what you... said." Her vents hissed open, trying to draw in air to cool the burning sensation in her core. Her front was slagged to hell and back - the plating half-melted over. She didn't dare spare it a look. Hawkmoon knew it was bad. But her sparkchamber had survived - and she knew that because she had survived. Barely. Probably not for long.
"They are devouring this world," the Verunlix rasped.
Hawkmoon hoped Cyberwarp and Nacelle were alive. That they were getting out. She couldn't feel much past the pain, but she didn't think they'd died. Yet. That was supposed to be something traumatic. She wasn't feeling anything traumatic so far. At least - nothing that hadn't been physically inflicted.
"They seek to draw Her here. Their patron god."
Great.
"We need to-"
"I can't move," Hawkmoon muttered. She jangled her chained servos for emphasis, then stopped - because it tugged on the swords running through her wings. And that... was too much.
"You have to."
"I can't."
"The summoning circle has almost been brought to completion."
Hawkmoon onlined her optics. "Circle?"
There. Past the Verunlix, on the other side of the room, the glowing soulfire circle containing the webbed form of a five-pointed star had been carved into the floor. At each point was the torn limb of a Hive Knight - a lesser one, not the Not-Warpriest. The fifth point had the unfortunate warrior-morph's own skull. At the centre of it was the Knight's torso, with its fattened Worm staked over its cuirass on a spear carved out of something's femur. A trio of Wizards floated above it, their hands clasped together and humming lowly in perfect harmony. They were ignoring her and the orb, entirely absorbed in their spell.
"We have to stop it," the Verunlix said, more urgently. "We have to stop it."
Fair.
"I have a sword," Hawkmoon murmured. "I can-"
She ejected the foldblade out of its compartment in her arm and it clattered to the ground.
"You'll need to cut the chains," she continued.
The Verunlix hesitated.
"What?"
"I don't have hands. I cannot lift it."
Hawkmoon groaned. "Then we die."
"I can press the button."
"I won't be able to reach it."
The Verunlix gave her a pitying look. "You will have to."
"What do you-..." Hawkmoon trailed off. Realization set in - and she rebelled against it, against the very idea of it.. "Oh... no. Please no. Please, it hurts, I can't-"
"You must."
"Please."
"If you do not, we will die. As will all of Estrum."
Hawkmoon vented deeply. It was insane. She couldn't do it. She couldn't. "Someone will-"
"No one can. They will come for us. We cannot kill them. The Daughter and the Celebrant are too much for us. We have to stop this now, while they are still hunting abroad."
"Who?"
"Our captors, the Celebrant of War and War's own progeny."
"But what's her na-"
"An Xohol, glorious Jaw-spawn of Xivu Arath," the Verunlix recited. Hawkmoon flinched. The name was... not something she wanted to hear. One of the Wizards at the other end of the room stirred at the mention of it, then returned to its spell with an irritated hiss. "Sprouted from a tooth knocked out of her Mother's maw in bloody battle; the larva wriggled inside the shattered root to make it a shell, a warren, a place of safety amidst the clamour of war. She is a fang, a murder-daughter. She hungers for your soul - to slay the Bane of the Warpriest. The Celebrant is her mate and champion of her Mother's cause. They can sense the blood you have spilled, just as I can. You are their key to rivers of stolen tribute. You are their death-bait to draw Oryx and His brood in towards slaughter. They-"
"Shut up," Hawkmoon snapped.
The Verunlix quietened.
"Thank you."
A couple of minutes passed.
"What's your name?" the fox asked.
"You don't know?"
"Why would I?"
"Because Augur does."
"We are not so closely interconnected a species, Seeker. The Augur likes to keep his secrets."
"I'm..." she hung her head. For a short while the only sound was the flicker of soulfire, the voices of the witches and the drip-drip-drip of energon streaming down the cleavers embedded in her wings and trickling from the pommels right to the floor. There was a small pool of blue below her already. Enough to seriously worry her. "Hawkmoon."
"I am Portent Eight-Six. I wish we could have met under better circumstances, truly." The Verunlix paused. "Are you ready?"
Hawkmoon didn't say anything for a time. Then, so quietly she could barely hear it herself: "I'm ready."
She slowly pulled her legs up, folding her knees to brace her pedes against the wall. Hawkmoon glanced around, did everything she could to put the moment off, to give herself some time to-
And she did it before she could think twice. She pressed her pedes against the wall, digging them into the time-worn stone, and she kicked - pushed hard. And, just as she'd been terrified of, the cleavers held firm.
Her wings did not.
Hawkmoon switched off her vocalizer before the scream to get out, but the sound of metal ripping was still loud enough. She fell to the cell's floor in a heap, energon pumping out of the stumps on her back where her primary wings used to stand.
/error: flight-sensors unresponsive/
/warning: massive energon leak detected/
/commencing stasis-loc-
No!
/command overridden/
A new pain, almost as blinding as the other, rippled out from her spark. Hawkmoon thrashed wildly, vents working overtime, and she bit down on her glossa - hard enough to draw even more energon. Messing with her systems hadn't been a good idea; she regretted even trying at all. The pain of it - the pain of all of it cut right through her, right to her processor and it did some more slicing up there. All in all, it took her a while to gather herself and steel her resolve against the throbbing ache at her back. Hawkmoon utterly refused to turn and look at what was left on the wall. It would've probably defeated her.
Somehow, though, the Wizards ahead hadn't noticed - too engrossed in their vile witchcraft to bother paying their captive offerings any attention. Hive and their priorities. But Portent Eight-Six was a fox of their word, and their orb pressed down on the switches of the foldblade's hilt. The panels snapped out, alighting with searing purple. Hawkmoon shuffled forward, brought the edge of the chains towards it, and nicked a link in two. All it took was some shimmying and shaking to make the rest of it loosen and fall off.
"Thank you," she gasped in a small voice.
"The lead witch is Hasaak," Portent told her, already moving on. Hawkmoon snatched the foldblade, grabbed the chains just for the added benefit of having another object to hit people with, and stumbled to her pedes - then did some more stumbling while she was there. She'd forgotten what it was like to live without the weight of wings.
"Kill Hasaak first," Portent Eight-Six continued. "Kill her quick. She is the largest of the three. Kill her. Before-"
"Before what?" someone else asked.
Hawkmoon's optics darted to the door. The Celebrant stood there, bemusedly watching her.
"Am I to blame?" he asked. "I told the automaton to 'die brave'... No, this is right. It is proper to struggle, to fight. So the King proclaimed - and the King is a navigator of dire truths. I applaud you, steel-wrought. I applaud your courage and sacrifice."
Hawkmoon staggered back, hitting the wall - and almost buckled over when the ragged joints of her wings hit cold stone. She pointed the Nullblade at him. "Frag off. Frag off!"
"I will not leave. You are a tithe to my god, my Queen, my faith - war insurmountable, endless, all-conquering and true. You are a bait-star, a lure, and we will not let you go." The Celebrant huffed. He aimed his Boomer. "But I commend your thirst to live. You are sturdy, stubborn, strong. Admirable qualities. I hunger to cross blades with your kin, wherever they have fled."
The room shook around them, dust falling from above. Neither of them paid it much mind.
"You won't find them," Hawkmoon promised.
"Will we not?"
"They're trained Seekers. They know how to outrun you, how to hide from you, and I've already told them all they need to figure out how to kill you," Hawkmoon seethed. "You'll never lay your claws on-"
The ceiling fell apart. Two shapes fell through with the crumbling rubble. One of them was Nacelle, who hit the floor on his front and groaned.
"Oh Primus," he whispered. "Oh Primus that hurt."
Hawkmoon sighed, exhausted and defeated, and fell to her knees. The other figure, An Xohol, clambered to her feet and glanced between them, distinctly unimpressed.
"Don't... Everyone stay where you are. Just give me a moment," Nacelle muttered. He dragged himself to his pedes, servos switching to plasma-cannons. "There we are. Let us leave or I'll fry you."
"Nas."
"Hey 'Moon," Nacelle said. He glanced over his shoulder at her. "How're you- Oh. Oh frag."
"Hey," Hawkmoon weakly replied, optics shuttering. She felt so tired.
The Celebrant made a curious sound. He adjusted his aim. "This is... unexpected."
An Xohol growled dangerously. "The metal-wrought came to die."
"Tribute, offered freely. The hunt is over before it begins." The Celebrant sounded... disappointed. His voice lowered - and his helm's visor glowed brighter. "I will break you for this. We will flense the secrets from your mind. We will flay your dreams from your soul and we will devour them. We will devour all your kind and spit out your bones."
"They're not going to let us go," Hawkmoon translated.
"Yeah, I'm picking up on that." Nacelle stepped back, towards her, with his cannons whining up.
Portent Eight-Six, huddling by Hawkmoon's side, perked up, their shadow-y ears flicking. "Not alone," they yipped excitedly. "Salvation!"
Something else dropped down through the hole in the ceiling, far too slender to be Cyberwarp, and it opened fire with four separate handcannons the moment it hit the floor - right at the Celebrant. The Hive creature snarled and raised one of its hands to cover its eyes while it returned fire. Shrieking globs of rotting starfire flew from his Boomer's barrel; Hawkmoon dove to the side to avoid the splash of eldritch white flames. The other figure danced the other way, leaping over the first frenzied swing of An Xohol's serrated sword. The Celebrant stepped forward, reaching to grab its own weapon out of un-space, but then - something, a massive armoured paw closed in on his shoulder and tugged him back, right into a glittering silver blade. The Boomer dropped from nerveless fingers, and the Celebrant helplessly glanced down at the length of Arc-coated steel. An Xohol twisted around, saw him and screamed with rage.
That scream redoubled in intensity when the Myod Excubitor running the Celebrant through with its beam-lance's bayonet pulled the Knight off and effectively tore him in half. Both bloodied parts fell to the ground with a pair of wet thuds. It raised its weapon to block the vengeful swing of An Xohol's sword as the blade came for its head and stood firm.
"I will tear you apart!" the Knight bellowed in her own wicked language. "I will pluck your heart from your-"
Hawkmoon staggered up behind her and shoved her Nullblade through the Knight's back, the indigo tip of it emerging from her sternum. "Shut the frag up," she spat, then pushed the Hive beast off and stumbled back. Nacelle caught and steadied her. The Excubitor carried on, crushing the dying Knight's head underfoot, and cut down the waking Wizards with a single burning sweep of its lance's beam-charge. Their bodies hit the ground in smouldering pieces. The summoning circle below them began to fade.
The other creature, the thin one, approached them. It was an Eecharik, Hawkmoon realized, in a light-weight exosuit. Its visor de-polarized and she realized something else - that she knew him.
"Oor," Hawkmoon grunted. Her vision was beginning to glitch.
"Your wings are on the wall," the bug snarked. "Aren't they supposed to be on your back?"
"Frag off."
"She's in a bad way," Nacelle said quickly. He looked her over. "Oh slag, this... this isn't good. We need to get her-"
"To the Raven Bridge, I know." Oor'un'zu holstered half his pistols and took up her other side. "She'll be fine."
"'Warp?" Hawkmoon softly asked.
"Already picked up. Pretty distressed with you being gone, so - enough shop, sky-runner. Let's-"
"Portent," Hawkmoon remembered. She looked around for the orb. "Are they okay?"
The Verunlix was alive. Floating in the middle of the room. Utterly still.
"Portent?"
"No," Portent Eight-Six whimpered. "No. No, it's too late, the torch has been lit, She's been beckoned, She knows we're here, She knows-"
The Verunlix cried out. Something else flashed within the recesses of the orb - something big, dark, with all the silent, dangerous weight of a circling shark. It struck faster than Hawkmoon could process - and the fox-form of Portent Eight-Six was no more. Gone, utterly. Darkness filled the crystal sphere, an inky-black gloom.
Three green eyes slowly winked open within.
"Go," Hawkmoon hoarsely urged. "Go, now."
The orb's widening cracks began to flare with a viridescent light.
They left. As quick as they could. The Excubitor followed them, keeping them covered, and as Oor and Nacelle dragged her from the cell, Hawkmoon heard more fighting in the corridors beyond. There were other Myods within, more Imperial guards, and they were putting every Hive critter they saw to the blade. Oor'un'xu chittered to them all as they passed, waving them on with fearful urgency.
Laughter, cruel and deep, followed them out.
They cleared the building - a Taishibethi-built university founded atop the old ruins of a Verunlix prison - and it trembled behind them. Buckled. Began to collapse on itself. The skies above were filled with war, with Tai plateships cutting through the Hive blockade and foldfighter formations flitting through the air against the swarms of furious Karves. There was more fighting on the ground, with scores of Excubitors holding back the hordes of Thrall, Acolytes and Ogres to clear them room - give them the space they needed to escape. Far, far ahead, Hawkmoon spotted a shimmering discus of multicoloured energy - and the instrument wired up next to her spark automatically identified it through and through. A Raven Bridge. It led to Tai Prime. The coordinates were unmistakable.
But why would the Tai risk-
Something roared. Loudly. The very earth below them shook with the force of it. The Hive hordes fell silent and, slowly, began to retreat. Even the Excubitors ceased their efforts and turned about with confusion.
Hawkmoon's spark thrummed with very real fear. She chanced a look behind her - and then sorely wished she hadn't.
A Knight pushed up out of the university's ruins, raised up on a sprouting tree of biomechanical make. It was massive - at least twice, if not three times as tall as she was, and garbed entirely in a massive suit of heavy night-black armour, with a myriad number of alien skulls adorning its pauldrons. Hive runes flickered to life along its cuirass, its bracers, its sabatons - and with another explosive roar, it raised up a colossal hadium-forged claymore glittering with glowing glyphs. Energy coalesced around the blade, potent and Dark. The Knight turned to face them. Only its upper third eye was visible, both the lower ones covered over in thick chitinous plates. Two long recurved horns curled alongside its head. A pair of tattered draconic wings spread out behind it.
The Knight spoke - and Hawkmoon doubled over as the voice, cacophonous, filled her processor utterly.
YOU WAGE WAR.
YOU CONDUCT COMBAT.
THIS IS MY DOMAIN.
YOU ARE TRESPASSING.
I AM OWED TRIBUTE.
I WILL COLLECT IT MYSELF.
AN: Huge massive thanks to Nomad Blue for editing!