RWBY 40k fanfiction – Salem, mistress of Inquisition.
Ep 10 : Ferrus Manus.
A planet was covered under darkness and snow covered its surface.
The wind was blowing hard in this world.
But suddenly, a comet of immense fire crossed the sky. He ripped through the clouds and headed straight for a gigantic mountain.
He crashed into a large snow-capped mountain.
The vibrations caused caused a gigantic avalanche to fall on the meteorite, covering it with a thick layer of snow.
Human tribes seeing the mountain on the horizon with the snow flowing and the cliffs falling were quite perplexed.
But the cold darkness reminded them of their exhausting labors to stay alive.
After a long time, a young child woke up in a metal shell.
He unplugged the cables plugged into his body.
He crawled inside his capsule. The boy saw his large hands. He admired the perfection of his body although naked.
He finally extricated himself from the capsule and saw that he was in a gigantic circular valley, deep within it.
The young boy understood that he was in a gigantic crater. He circled around the pod, which was crumpled by the impact. X was the only letter marked. A number that the boy had recognized instinctively. This number was familiar and told him that he belonged to something great and glorious.
A colossal mountain rose on the side showing that this mountain was dug by this immense explosion. This crater was not natural and the boy eventually realizes that this capsule was responsible.
He looked at the black sky and wondered one thing: where did he come from?
Looking back at the mountain. He saw an angular structure was nestled in coiled stalagmites.
Approaching it, he observed that the path was adorned with patterns carved into the stone. Arches of stones linked by cursive runic forms. Then he arrived in front of the structure in the heart of the mountain. Its walls were black and shiny, no joints and no cracks. It was a solid and perfect cube.
While the child observed with astonishment this object.
The latter suddenly adorned itself with cracks before completely dislocating. A rolled form, a disassembled entity that began to move to rebuild itself.
This monster was made of a swirling weave, architectural and organic, artificial and intelligent. It was a living thing and a monstrous construction of biomechanical gears accompanied by a whisper of liquid metal that reverberated throughout the cavern.
The huge cavern was wormlike, unfolding from its collapsed prison.
The shocked boy picked up a sharp shard of glass-smooth black rock and stepped forward to face the creature. It was a titanic wyrm, its body reforming in constant rotation, with liquid ease.
The bulbous exocranium of the monster and arachian was equipped with antennas, three proboscises furnished with needle-like teeth and faceted eyes.
The boy lunged at him with his obsidian blade through his side, but the stone shattered against the giant insect's glittering armor. He was thrown away and hit the ground hard, his body bruised to the bone. He was thrown away and hit the ground heavily and was bruised.
He straightened up to fight again, but the creature dug its way into the cliffs to reach the planet's surface. The Primarch had failed in his first task. But his eyes and his heart reflected his determination which was growing, then being part of his being. He swore to himself that he would not fail a second time to kill this fearsome creature.
The boy understood that his arrival had freed the monster from his monster's prison and took the responsibility to finish this creature. He followed the trail of destruction left by the creature, which led him to the bottom of the cliff.
His ascent had left the rock covered in hand and foot holds, making climbing possible, but the wyrm was going too fast for him to catch up in time.
The boy came out of the crater, his hands bleeding. He saw the creature's scales strewn across the floor of the crater rim as its tracks receded into the darkness of the land before his eyes.
He walked for a while and saw in the distance a caravan drawn by gray-skinned beasts of burden. The men in it were hunched over, covered in furs and heavy leather capes.
He was tempted to go up to them, ask who they were and where he was.
But he remembered his oath and finally turned his back on this caravan. And followed the tracks of the creature in the black and deserted moors.
Countless years passed. The young boy grew, gained strength and courage.
The people he met feared and respected him. Many nicknames were given to him. The Giants of Karaashi nicknamed it Cataclysm because their monastery on the mountain breached and freed the sorcerer locked up there.
The warlords nicknamed him "Flesh", expressing their desire to monopolize a resource by his person.
Man fed on sand and metals because he was able to feed on them.
He faced in his long wanderings robotic and semi-robotic and infernal creatures. These monsters were composed of cadaverous, humanoid pieces of flesh, with metal inlays, wiring wires, and the body sheathed in blades.
But the boy's toughest battles against the Elemental of Karaashi in a maze of ice, where when he faced the great migration of the Yarrk in Jaadan Fjord, where when he faced the mechanized hosts of Stanislaus, the demented Reverend Iron, who had hunted the boy as a child, until one day he had faced the mystical armada himself and smashed it with his own hands.
A few years later, the young man had become an adult. He descended Ice Peak, a range of mountains in the far north.
He had become a true legend, because no one matched the strength of his arms. He finally learned the name of the planet: Medusa.
Even the Storm Giant, a man of superhuman strength was humbled to see that the man swam across entire mountains.
He reached the highest peaks of the mountains, the deepest of the oceans to push ever further the limits of the body.
The clans of Medusa saw him as an invincible warrior and unanimously adopted him as one of their own.
The man never sought to end the conflicts between the factions because competition was a source of excellence. Thus, he remained neutral and watched the wars from afar.
After an interminable time, the monster he had been looking for for years was again in front of him.
The monster now named Asirnoth, the Great Silver Worm was to finish off its adversary after being tracked by the beast for days through the legendary Land of Shadows. An area of the planet home to gigantic relics of stone and metal from a bygone era.
It is in the midst of these ruins, the Primarch and the worm clashed mercilessly for days and nights, traversing seas and continents.
They climbed up a volcano. Asirnoth tried to bite the Primarch but the latter grabbed his fangs before pulling them out.
Then he lifted it with all his strength in front of a huge river of lava before plunging it into the river.
He gritted his teeth at the excruciating pain but when he pulled his hands out, the monster was gone.
Instead, he discovered that his hands were covered in the creature's living metal, as flexible as flesh and solid as ceramic.
After Asirnoth's victory, the Primarch recovered.
The Primarch having nothing else to do, he began to conquer the tribes of Medusa who submitted and revered him as a protective god. Ferrus Manus wanted obedience, the religion attributed to him mattered little to him. In exchange for this obedience, he manufactured machines and other technologies forgotten on the planet after discovering the sealed warehouses in the most inaccessible mountains.
He then earned his nickname with his hands "Iron Hands" in Medusian, "Ferrus Manus" in Gothic.
These priceless objects and their possible replication allowed the tribes to prosper and begin their transition into true civilizations.
In 824.M31, Ferrus Manus discovered a gigantic source of light coming from the northern lands.
There he then discovered a man dressed in golden armor and a woman with golden hair.
It was the Emperor of Humanity and the Witch of Terra who had come to find him.
Ferrus Manus was quite skeptical to see that his people were his parents but in the end, he felt respect for his parents.
Although attached to Medusa, he took command of the Xth Legion of Space Marines.
He was introduced to the Imperium to his brothers Horus Lupercal, Leman Russ and Kira Saito.
Moreover, the Emperor took the opportunity to give the Wolf-King a weapon: The Emperor's spear. A weapon as a reward for the Space Wolves victory.
There were only 16 brothers left to reunite...
To be continued… Fulgrim.
Note: Yes, the chapter was short today. How do you think canon Team RWBY would react to all of this? How does they react to an alternate history of their worst ennemy?