~The Tombstone of a World~
~797. M30~
~Segmentum Tempestus~
~Barbarus~
~Roboute Guilliman, Lord Commander of the Imperium and Imperial Regent~
The evacuation of the planet's populace proceeded about as fast as it could. The situation was explained quickly to the inhabitants of Torchwood, who were able to quickly repack and start loading onto the Eldar ships through one of the three webway gates.
Each of the remaining ships were of the same rough proportions and model as Charnac's Pride itself, being a five kilometer affair with laser-based weaponry and fightcraft bays. By his memory of comfortable living space to cargo bay scale for evacuations such as these, compared to the size of the bay, he estimated about forty-eight thousand people could stay in each ship and remain distant enough to not increase the risk of illnesses too drastically.
Thirteen-thousand currently live in Torchwood and its surrounding settlements. They were already brought up to cleanliness standards that were required of them, their items already processed, and their crop already turned into longer-lasting breads and jerkies. They were able to be packed in the ship within the day.
It was the rest of the planet that would cause the most delays. Each village had to be visited separately, brought onto the ship, their crops and supplies loaded, their bodies and items cleaned, and psychically scanned for lingering hints of rot. People brought in the ships in batches of twenty to a hundred starving and superstitious humans being told they had to go with the strangers using magic otherwise they would die in a few days.
Guilliman didn't allow himself time to rest, not when so many lives had to be saved from this place. He worked constantly, stepping through webway gates to speak to scared villagers, to convince them of the danger, to help load their supplies, to get them through the portals and off the planet.
This was in addition to the constant stream of pale dead that seemed to issue forth from every corner of the world, every dead suddenly rousing to attack everyone on the planet. Torchwood was being stripped of anything useful, and the Eldar and Hospitaliers present had to fight in shifts to keep the dead from surging forwards to attack the legions of workers and conscripts.
The villages currently under attack often had to be evacuated without gathering up much of their supplies, if any, with hundreds of corpses surging forth in endless tides. Guilliman could fight off any number of them, but he couldn't be everywhere at once.
Petra, Aurelia, and Kassandra took it upon themselves to help manage the processing of the humans evacuated. He wasn't sure how, he wasn't there to observe with how busy he was moving between villages. He was grateful for their assistance.
He had thought Morrigan was helping to defend the evacuation of Torchwood's supplies and materials. For an entire day he thought this. It was in a brief moment of inaction that Asarnil, managing his half of the operation, had urgently told him that she had been seen running off towards the highest mountain peak. That the seers were too blinded by the psychic rot enveloping the planet to see where she was.
Opening a webway gate on the peak of the mountain would let the ruinous air through, killing everyone without protection. In the middle of evacuation, that was everyone they were trying to save.
A frigid feeling settled in his core. A feeling that had nothing to do with the cold of Barbarus winter. Guilliman stepped through a hasty webway gate, foot landing at the base of the mountain in the center of a rotting world. His helmet had been taken off to help convince the people of Barbarus. He had no time to retrieve it. His shield was adjusted, strapping against his upper arm.
His armored boots shattered more fragile stones as he raced across rocky plains leading up to the tops. The scant mosses gave way to bare rock, and soon his panicked stomps were shattering them as well.
A canyon loomed in front of him, he bundled his legs and leapt titanically, soaring hundreds of feet through air that had more in common with hair-curling cleaners than anything breathable. His sword stabbed into the mountain side, an improvised pick that he used to throw himself up the increasingly steep slopes.
His hand grabbed a rocky outcropping. It slipped. He snarled and punched forwards, his fist smashing through frozen rock and creating a hand hold where none had existed before. A tiny bruise formed and quickly faded on his knuckles.
His breath was held, only coming out in a thin and constant exhale, forming wispy lines of hot steam that traced behind him on his ascent. His exertion formed a thin sheet of sweat on his brow, providing a tiny layer of protection on his skin from the increasingly difficult to endure atmosphere.
He climbed only in leaps now, shattering the rock beneath each massive bound up the mountain. An avalanche following in the wake of his ascent, burning sword stabbing into rock, fist crashing into stone, acid-air futility attempting to hinder his advance upwards.
He didn't bring adequate protection. He desperately hoped that his sister was wiser than him.
Another gigantic bound upwards. The peak was in sight.
His armor began to hiss, vapors of psychic bone trailing alongside his own exhalation, following him up the bald peaks. The distant rumbling of the rockslide behind him only continued to grow.
Another gigantic leap upwards. It was getting harder to see.
His clothes began to burn away, dissolving in strips. Pain began to emerge alongside bloody knuckles and sore limbs. His sword burned white, and the worst of the flesh-melting air could not reach him through its hateful flames.
Another gigantic leap brought him screaming over the rim of the mountain's peak. His skin began to peel off in strips. Pain enveloped him like a burning embrace. He ignored it all.
The pace of the world seemed to slow as hyperactive adrenaline pumped through his superhuman body. He took in the scene as he rose.
Morrigan was struggling to push herself up in the midst of a stone courtyard, glaring hatefully at the bloodless almost-human with arms spread wide and joyfully before her. Despair crept up in her eyes. Her armor was sizzling, she could barely stand, she was alive. She was in appropriate armor for this, it was barely holding together.
Her gaze shifted to him as he rose over the edge of the mountain's peak. Amber eyes behind a clear visor slowly widened. The sorcerer slowly turned his head to see what was behind him. Too many eyes with too-little symmetry to be human. Each widened behind heavy horn-riddled brows and ridges.
A furious giant glared at him.
His flesh hissed, mixing with the trail of his low exhale. He raised the sword above his head, grabbing it in both of his skin-less hands. The sorcerer attempted to throw himself to the side. Morrigan threw herself in the other direction. Guilliman brought his sword down.
A tsunami of golden flame enveloped the mountaintop. A brightly-burning ocean that burst forwards, turning the sorcerer and the tower behind him to ash. The upper portion of the monolith slowly fell, pulled down in the wave of psychic inferno and disappearing just the same.
He felt weary as his feet landed on the courtyard of the mountaintop. He couldn't waste time being tired. Every moment here sapped his strength and burned his flesh.
His sister said something. The ringing in his ears didn't allow him to hear it. Her eyes were wide and horrified. He tried to say something.
His lips weren't responding. He couldn't pronounce the words. He grunted in frustration.
He'd tell her later. She had to know that she was too important to sacrifice on some unimportant sorcerer on some backwater planet like this.
He grabbed her by the shirt and hauled her up, stomach on his shoulder, his hand on her legs. He almost swayed, increasing the fury he aimed at himself. His feet crashed against the stone of the courtyard, and sent him flying off the edge of the peak, down the mountainside in a clumsy drop.
He had to get far enough away from the air of the peak to make a webway gate safe.
An outcropping was about to collide with his legs. He kicked, shattering it and sending him forwards down the mountainside again. Gravity pulled him faster and faster. He exhaled the last of his breath with the impact, coming out in a great plume of hot expended air. The ice-cold winds numbed his flesh of the pain it should be in.
He kicked off the mountainside again, cracking the rock face for a dozen feet at his impact sight. Blood began to form around his flesh like a second skin, clotting quickly enough to serve as a shell of red where his scraps of armor no longer covered.
He kicked off the mountainside again, descending far quicker than his initial rise, aided by the pull of the planet. His feet smashed into sharp stones, cutting into his flesh in small amounts, but breaking the world beneath his stomps.
A grim light began to emerge from the distant horizon, cutting through the pale mists with shockingly toxic green. A wave of disgust washed over him as he beheld it. He felt Morrigan convulse and retch.
Lines began to write themselves on the sky above, thousands of miles across, like an aurora of nauseating colors and shapes. A jolly chorus began to echo through the winds as the milky sky twisted into a more putrid pale yellow.
His legs kicked off the stone again, sending him flying forwards. But the stone did not shatter, it crumbled instead, falling in on itself like rotten wood. The sword of the Emperor burned like a supernova in his grip, wrestling foul winds with the smell of fire and ash. His shield shined lustrous gold against a backdrop of a drained world.
The ritual had been completed within a day and some hours it seemed. An unfortunate thing, but not impossible to handle.
A rolling laughter emerged from the mountain behind him. The sides of the rock all around him began to fall in on themselves, and their shapes began to contort into writhing, nigh-organic forms. The stench grew increasingly unbearable.
He kicked off the side again, the rock wobbled like blubber as he flew forwards over the ravine he had noticed previously. The bottom now filled with a yellow-white river, from which squat green and pink creatures began to crawl up from. Their mischievous, watery eyes sitting inconsistently over happy smiles filled with rotten yellow teeth.
He swung his sword before landing again, turning a massive section of bleeding loam into warped volcanic rock. Kicking off this shattered it behind him, and sent his forwards yet again. Morrigan began to convulse on his shoulder. His blue eyes glared at the parade of crawling rotten creatures that stretched out their arms towards him as he soared over their malformed heads.
"Oh ho~ We weren't expecting visitors~ children, quickly, don't be rude." An ancient, fatherly tone boomed like a massive iron bell behind him. Its voice dripped with corrosive rust. Thousands of eyes turned towards him, sword shining bright in an ocean of ambiguous and rotten shades. "Share with our guests~"
Spells of toxin and bile crested like a battalion of catapult fire towards him. He swung, a wave of golden fire crashing into a waterfall of filth in the air before him. He continued to fall, feet crashing against the rotten skull of some mammothine xeno and sending him flying forwards again.
Sour mists in the air swirled, and bloated flies emerged from the foaming winds. They raced forwards to latch onto him, Guilliman let loose another wave of furious heat, turning their bodies to ash. Spells of rot crashed against his golden shield, and turned to dust upon touching its light.
It wasn't enough on its own. Twin candles of gold in a churning sea of browns and greens, gripped in blood-red arms.
"Oh~ You're hurt, visitor. Please let me help you." The voice boomed out in worry. A massive hand began to rise from the earth before him. Miles around the emerging hand turned into mire and murk, trees and rocks sinking into a newborn sea of decaying life.
The hand crashed against the murk, sending waves of filth around it. The arm strained, and a wretched, bloated face pulled it's way out of the brackish amniotic ocean. Teeth the shade of daisies, eyes frosted over and squatly set under massive slabs of heavy, spongy flesh. It was smiling at him, grin stretching all the way back to almost touch the vestigial ears underneath a crown of twisted wooden antlers.
Maggots fell in rivers from the wide smile, and a tattered hood of red struggled in vain to cover the bloated head of the titan rising from the mire. Sickly vines rapidly grew from the waters surrounding the colossus, twisting and writhing even as it died and withered away again. Lily pads and seaweed began to choke the ocean of filth, even as the leaves choked in a world without proper sunlight.
He swung his sword down, parting the foul sea under a wave of ash-making gold. The ground beneath him was solid only for a moment, which he used to kick off and soar through the air once more. Jolly and permissive chuckles mocked his actions, booms of laughter trailing after him just like his hot breaths did.
"There's no need to be so panicked, dear child~ You're in the care of the greatfather now. What could you have to worry about?" The Great Unclean One called after him.
The winds above his head twisted, and storm clouds of poison began to form, rolling in from every angle around him. Slowly approaching from the horizon.
"Please. Let me help you~"
A rain of laser-fire screamed down from the heavens. The clouds burned and scattered as the hot plasma evaporated seas of rot and pus.
The world shattered inwards, runes of elegant script writing themselves in the air in the distance, pushing back the foulness of the world surrounding them. A melting earth turned into an island of solid rock and bone. Songs of power began to clash against jolly chuckles, overpowering them and allowing the music of the Eldar to set the rhythm of the world.
The ghosts of Eldar stepped forth from the tear in the world over the island, their arms carrying long guns that fired ceaselessly at all things that attempted to approach the island. Behind them a legion of living stepped forwards, carrying guns of their own, and letting loose a constant stream of fire and psychic song.
"Oh! There's no need to be rude!" The mountainous voice boomed in parental scolding. "I have gifts for you, children."
The Great Unclean One rose up from the ocean directly next to the island, raising a staff of gnarled and curled wood, which grew and withered at equal rates. It opened its mouth, letting loose a river of bile as it attempted to chant a spell.
A giant of bone stepped through the hole in reality, crashing into the Great Unclean One and forcing it back hundreds of feet, booming out a war-poem as it did so.
"I MARCHED INTO THE SANCTUARIES OF THOSE PEOPLE AND TREAD UPON THE JEWELED IDOLS OF THEIR PUTRID GOD." Wraithknight Malwyrn roared as his sword cut a ruinous gash against the flabby arms of the Great Unclean One. Plates of bones steamed in the hot murk of the swamp it strode upon.
Guilliman swung his blade, turning a score of tainted sea and writhing smiles into solid ash. He kicked off this, soaring through the air yet again, getting closer to the isle of singing bone.
"Oh! If it isn't little Mellryn! You know I was talking to your mother just the other century. She misses you, you know? Why don't you visit her?" The mountain of filth was unbothered by the new tear in its flesh, attempting conversation even as its fist crashed against the shield of the giant of bone.
"I STRODE INTO THE GATES OF LIFE AND DEATH AND OF THE END OF ALL THINGS AND THE DEATH OF ELD AND GODS!" Malwyrn boomed out, guns mounted on his massive shoulders screaming out bursts of laser-fire that turned tumors into burns, even as the form of the Great Unclean One shifted and formed a new series of hideous mouths all across its enormously fat body.
Another wave of fire came from his increasingly fatigued hand. Morrigan had stopped shaking some time ago, but he could feel her heartbeat. She was still alive.
Rot was burned to ash. He leapt off this temporary place of burned pus and towards the island of bone. The very air was starting to melt their armor, and the island grew almost as fast as it now started to shrink.
"I BEHELD RUINATION AND FOUND IT WANTING BEFORE MY BLADE!" The Wraithknight screamed in cold fury even as its legs began to melt in the mire below. Even as its psychic shield was gnawed upon by creatures of bile and laughing poison. Even as its colossal blade clashed against an ever-dying staff of gnarled wood.
Guilliman soared through the portal, over the heads of singing Eldar, body crashing against the bone-floor of stable reality. The living and the dead pulled back through the portal, their guns firing all the while. They stepped back through, and the first gate in reality snapped shut.
In the distance, a second gate opened up for a brief moment, and the head, torso, and arm of a giant of bone fell through, parasites of rot on his form washed away with waves of psychic fires. The giant strained for a moment, before letting itself go limp against the floor of the hangar with a titanic thud. The gate above it's head snapped shut, a fingertip of rot cut off at the joint and falling into the psychic fires of the numerous Eldar surrounding the ruinously damaged giant.
Guilliman rolled over, staring at the ceiling for a moment, before forcing himself up to glance at his sister.
She was breathing. She was alive. Eldar in robes of white rushed towards them.
He let his face collide with the floor of bone, the pain of skinless flesh finally reaching him again. His rapidly-clotting blood sealing in his injuries, but not healing him.
His nerves screamed at him. He had made it. They were safe.
Asarnil could handle the rest for right now.
Everything went black
