Talia clearly underestimated the dourness of the Astartes. Ever since they had marched off from the ruins, the Angel of Death did not say single word. They moved methodically through the underbrush, the wind softly caressing her skin and the leaves crunching under their boots. The planet was reaching its autumn cycle and there was much orange and yellowing leaves on the earth. This made stealth impossible as hard leaves getting crunched didn't exactly keep one hidden. Then again, they weren't ratlings who skulk and hide. She was a Cadian and the Astartes was well...an Astartes. They operated on their own rules.
The path they took was thankfully clear. Out here in the forest, there was little for the Slaaneshi hordes to be interested in. That was a blessing at least.
"Ten more kilometers, My Lord, then we will be at the rally point," Talia reminded the Astartes. The angel did not reply, not even an affirming grunt. Even the Imperial Fists she fought with said a simple 'Understood,' or 'Copy' back at Cadia. Did the Astartes not reply to her simply because she wasn't worth talking to? Well...she was a lowly member of the Guard after all. Yes, she was an officer but she was the lowest grade. A part of her felt prickled at this but who was she to argue? Perhaps it simply was enough that the Astartes travelled with her. Anything further than that would be unnecessary.
And so, she kept to herself, quietly filing in behind the green-plated warrior. Her thoughts strayed far, to the forest around them. Despite herself, Talia could not stop talking. "The forests were known to be filled with docile creatures, Deere, or as the locals called them. They provided sport as well as food and clothing for the populace. I've seen a few. Very gentle souls. They take to our rations better than we do," Talia ended with a chuckle, remembering her first Deere encounter. She continued.
"It was a short outreach to familiarize ourselves with the local enviroment. I was with my unit when we stumbled on a herd of them. They approached us, curious on who we were. Perhaps they noticed that we smelt and acted different from the locals?" She shook her head. "I opened my pack and tried to feed one with it. The thing licked it clean off my hand."
Talia did not know why she was telling the Astartes this. Perhaps she was just chatty. Or perhaps she needed some noise to drown out the monotony of marching. Either way, she was glad she wasn't alone.
The Slayer on the other hand, listened silently. And he listened well. It was a far cry to expect someone such as him to relate to the simple infantrywoman's story yet, he did. Because before all this, before his power and rage, he was once a simple man much like Talia. In aeons long past, he was simply a grunt. He tapped into his memories and visions played of events long past.
Once, at boot camp, there was once a recruit who could not stop staring at a particular rock that could fit on a grown man's palm. To punish him, he remembered that recruit was paired with it since he couldn't keep his eyes off the damn thing. Thus, the rock became the recruit's battle-buddy. Everywhere he went, the recruit had to take the rock with him. Whenever he erred, the Drill Instructor would scold him for performing worse than a rock. Eventually, graduation came and for their ceremony, the rock was deemed a sufficient recruit as it had technically passed all the tests. The recruit paid for the rock's uniform and equipment, all rock-sized of course, and took it with him to Mars even.
Last he could remember, it was still there with the recruit he served with.
Good times...before Hell came.
His good mood shifted slightly. He would run out of words to describe the burning hatred he felt for that place. That marauding and rapacious realm that brought nothing but pain and death in its wake. It took lives without giving back; a parasitic realm that now rightfully would not hurt anyone else again. He tried to tap into his psyche, to feel for any remaining hellish taint that could be left. Yet, he felt nothing save for...the other thing.
"No!" Talia suddenly cried out. The Slayer turned immediately as his erstwhile chatty companion ran forward. She saw something he didn't, he realized, as she went on one knee, right next to a deer looking animal. The distress on her face was palpable as she ran an eye over the creature. It was a majestic thing with snow-white fur and stag-like horns. But it was wrong, the Slayer found, as he loomed over it. The creature's veins were bulging with power, green and purple. Baying and pained cries left its lips as it struggled to make sense of what was happening to it.
"The Warp...it's doing this," Talia muttered, understanding coming to her face. She was tempted to touch the deere, to comfort it but the glowing veins was a warning sign not to touch it. She could only watch helplessly as whatever unknown sickness tortured the poor thing. Quietly, a prayer left her lips.
"Oh God Emperor, Lord of Terra and Mankind," she whispered quietly. "Grant this creature mercy and succour. May you extend mercy to it. It's soul may be a beast but it is a innocent one. And all good and innocent things come from you, o God Emperor of Mankind."
As the trooper prayed, the Doom Slayer stole a quick glance at the sky. The new nightmare realm above. The Warp, he mused. It had a ring to it, he decided. It had its own distinct aura to it. While Hell was a angry and burning cascade of energy, the warp he could describe as a sea. A violent and storming sea that crashed upon him. And the entities behind it were the bastard paddlers making waves with their metaphorical oars. It wasn't something new that he didn't face before. He survived and destroyed Hell, he could survive and outlive the Warp. All he had to do was pour his Will, let the divinity in him shine.
If whatever was infecting the thing was from there and corrupting it...could he purge that sickness?
Only one way to find out.
And with that, the sea calmed.
Talia watched in astonishment as her skin felt warm but there was no fire. But it was enough for the flame poured forth into the air and the deere screamed as the veins on its body was burned away into flaming char. Eventually, the veins all vanished and the deere huffed its breath. Slowly, it stood on its hind legs, shakily at first, but it found its strength. Soon enough, it was walking about as if nothing had happened to it, fauna being munched inside its mouth.
The Guardswoman turned to the Astartes. The angel was giving the deer cursory glance before he nodded, walking off. Talia gulped. Another list of miracles all in the span of one day. She did not have enough time to think more though as the Slayer picked up his speed and if she dallied, she would be left behind. Quickly, she went up and ran after him. She did however give a glance back to their previous path.
She blinked again.
The path they walked...it looked normal, as if the Warp wasn't touching it at all.
They stopped again, not even a few minutes later. Talia quickly went on one knee, lasrifle at the ready as she tried to listen on. The Slayer stood still, his HUD showing dots in the far distance. Talia settled on a distance, her eyes narrowing. Staccato bursts of fire and faint shouting.
"Contact, 12 o' clock," Talia whispered, her trigger finger itching to fire. She glanced up at the Slayer. "There are villages along the route, My Lord. This could be one of them. What are your orders?" She then grinned when the Slayer took a cursory glance at his stubber before breaking off into a sprint. Quickly, she stood and followed, their bootsteps crunching even more lonely leaves. Talia's heart pounded underneath her chest-plate as she struggled to catch up to the Slayer, unmindful of the mortal woman trying her best to not get left behind. A part of Talia felt miffed again that the Astartes would sprint of like that but between her and a possible village of innocents, she understood the need for haste.
Then, the forest path cleared and the distance closed to reveal a hamlet on fire. Private dwellings that housed families as well as barns and other implements of agricultural life were put to the torch. Stacks of bodies, all uncorrupted by the touch of the warp lay together. If Talia looked closer, they were all violated in manners that the deranged and Slaaneshi could conjure. She took a breath to school her rage and focus.
"Monsters," she heaved down, iron-clad control failing. There were still gunshots happening in the far distance. Survivors making a last stand. She glanced up again to see what the Astartes would wish of them to do but...he was no longer there.
"Long live the Prince! Long live the Prince! Long live the Prince!" chanted the crowd, grins on their faces as the stood before the last unburnt barn of the hamlet, their blessed bodies glowing with perfect royal purple. They may all have been wearing rags that their bodies knew in their peasant lives but they were now perfected. Gaunt and sick forms, now sculpted like statues of old. In their hands, torches were alit with purple flame and an assortment of weapons dripping both with blood and body fluids.
Taran stepped forward, looking up at the lone barn. He took a sniff and shuddered with pleasure. Inside, four souls. Three women and a man. The man was a Cadian, a off-worlder brimming with fury and defiance and currently seated on the lone window firing into the crowd below. Well, he was before his las-weapon got fried. The women, he knew who they were. They all grew up in the same village and those three have always treated him with scorn. Of course they would, they couldn't appreciate his genius, his art. But, the Prince of Pleasure did and granted him the recognition that his own home wouldn't.
And now, he was going to show those three women and that off-worlder the price for defying.
With a artful show of violation so beautiful the Prince would delight in the excess!
But Taran considered himself not just a genius but merciful as well. He would give them a chance to come to him peacefully.
"Come out, my pretties! Come to Taran! I promise I will be gentle with you!" He roared, his voice a beautiful sonorous lift that would have moved any crowd.
''Go frak yourself, Taran! You were pathetic then, you are still pathetic now, you damned freak!" one of the women screamed. Sophie, her name was. Taran scowled.
''I was an artist! You all simply didn't understand, you peasants!" he howled.
''You were caught pleasuring yourself to a grox!"
''Maybell was a beautiful grox!" Taran screamed. He caught himself and calmed. He smiled. Very well then. It was better that they would resist. It was all the more sweeter. He turned around to the crowd behind him and spread his arms open. A manic grinned spread on his face.
''Oh faithful of the Prince! They defy us! Storm this place, show them the delights that Lord of Excess brings!" he cackled. He turned to a member of the crowd, Daren, who glowed with the magicks of the warp. He was always weird before, muttering about seeing things in the dark. "Daren, blow that barn door open!"
And so, Daren lifted himself up from the earth, his fingers electrified with power. He hovered forward, his eyes glowing purple as the marks of the Prince made itself known. Taran grinned, ready to see the display of warp might shown. But then, Daren froze.
Then he screamed.
''The music! The music! It is...it is over-powering! Make it stop!" Daren wailed, shaking to himself violently as his fingers dug into his eyes. "Make it stop! Make it stop! Make it stop! MAKE IT STOP!"
"Make what stop? I don't hear any music!" Taran yelled. But the screaming Daren could not say more for his head exploded in a shower of gore, bone, and fluids. His body dropped onto the earth as easily as fruit would fall from a tree. Taran cautiously approached the body, still twitching violently on the floor.
Then, there was another sound.
A low whine at first then, a flash as a explosion tore through the crowd. Orange-yellow fire spread forth consuming their flesh in a purifying embrace. Then, a figure that moved faster, way faster than what Taran could register, moving among them like a farmer threshing wheat. His stubber sang psalms of retribution, decorating the floor red with their cursed blood. In his other hand, steel glinted like star-lit scimitars as he hacked, sliced, and cut with contempt and prejudice in his moves. The Slaaneshi mob died quickly and without mercy, the speedy figure leaving nothing but their souls laid bare to be consumed.
Then, the figure leapt. Taran could only lift his weapon fruitlessly as the Slayer landed on him. Pain coursed through Taran's body as the Slayer's boot crushed his ribs into the floor, viscera and insides spilling as a broken dam would pour water. He tried to cry out to the Prince to save him but the whispers were no longer there. There was something else though that he could hear, in his bare soul.
The electrified personification of wrath and rage, and the glowing eyes of the Doom Slayer looking down at him with contempt. While the Prince was purple and silver, the Slayer was orange and red. His presence seared and burned and cleansed. The whispers and cackles of the Warp were gone. The scraping in the back of his mind were banished as the flames of divine wrath cut them down.
For now, in this starless realm...the stars had descended.
And its light could not be extinguished.
A/N: Taken from my SB and QQ account.
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