AN: Written in a tent in a desert with a shitty connection and not nearly enough time, forgive me for the quality and length. I hope you guys enjoy it! I enjoyed exploring the general a bit in this chapter.
It had been a week since my soldiers failed to assault the cultist base, and hadn't that just been the surprise? Casualties up to that point had been light up to that point, as was to be expected of my hunters. But the cultists had been killing them in ones and twos, and then the assault had happened and six of my hunters had died, including a ritter, something that was near impossible with their ability to heal from nearly any injury.
The cultists had laid a trap for me, hiding hundreds of their comrades deep in the confines of their pleasure holes, places my Attenaters had been leary to enter lest they experience something truly traumatizing. I had been happy to let them ignore the nooks and crannies where their should have been few if any cultists hiding, but after the failure I had quickly changed that policy, every nook and cranny would be explored and reported upon, I would never lose another of my hunt to bad intel again if at all possible.
Which brought me to the present, I was out of my form as the Grand Hunter and sat at the head of a grand council. A hundred of my Marchenfurst sat around me with Dyrrath at my right and Anluan at my left. As my Feenherzog Dyrrath stood as the highest ranking of my commanders hence his position of honor, and Anluan was of course my Mistress of hounds, a position which would come to hold great importance in a week with the first of the hounds being born soon during the next ritual.
The ritual of course was the reason this council had been gathered in the first place, simply put I wasn't capable of keeping up with the sheer manpower we needed for the conquest of the spires under hives. I had vastly underestimated the manpower and scope of both the cultists and the gangs that ruled it. The gangs were the lesser power of course, but they were still a power, and one that required manpower to deal with.
The ork bands that were sprinkled through the various sectors acted as a nice source of souls to be used in the ritual along with the lonesome xenos that had been unlucky enough to cross the path of the hunt, no alien would be allowed on a world claimed by humanity. Gangs and Xeno's were nothing compared to the cult however, where maybe three Kleine Jagd were needed for all the other gangs and minor powers of the spire the entirety of the rest of my hunt was focused upon the cult.
That was hundreds of Fey hunters fighting, and dying to claim even a single mile of the under hives' vast depths. For the first two weeks I had transformed maybe two hundred new souls to reinforce the front as we slowly encountered more resistance. I had believed that would be more than enough to replace any and all casualties we would see in the future, and bolster my forces massively.
A full half of those reinforcing hunters had died in the weeks that followed as the cultists stopped my advance and even began their own counter attack. Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of cultists had flooded up from the depths of the hive, many of them branded with the mark of slaanesh and whipped into a feverish assault. I don't know where they got the numbers and I didn't want to know as I suspected many of those who fought in the assault were not willing members of the cult.
A counter-attack was not in the plan and so with my lords and sorcerers pulled from the front to plan for our response to this unexpected eventuality we found ourselves here, discussing how we would fix our manpower issues. "Lord Vannem I understand your grievances with the use of larger numbers of Jaegers and Attenaters in our forces, but simply put they have proven to be our most effective unit to date."
The man speaking was a first born Marchenfurst, Lord Linnan, he was loyal, pragmatic, and a large proponent of the hit and run strategy we had been using up to the present. He saw the creation of further lords, and even my Feenritters as a waste of resources due to the higher consumption of souls needed to create and equip them. The man he was speaking to was his near opposite, a second generation Marchenfurst who had been created as a part of the reinforcing wave Vannem seemed to be the biggest supporter of a near complete change in our doctrine.
He wished for the Ritters to become a larger part of our forces, doubling their numbers at the least and then using them as an unstoppable ram to slam into the cultist forces. Needless to say the two Lords of the Fey did not get along. "And I agree that the lightest of our forces have proven themselves time and again, but their usefulness to date has rapidly been depleting as the cultists bring ever more of their innumerable hordes to the forefront. They simply are not capable of killing enough of the scum to keep them at bay and a single Ritter per hunt isn't enough to stop the sheer weight of numbers the human filth can bring to bear." His words were full of passion and logic, but they did little to convince the other Lords. Fey did not think like men, especially in war.
"All you've done is prove my point little brother, the number of Jaegers at the current time isn't enough to hold back the assault that the garbage is throwing our way, as such wasting souls and time creating hundreds of new Ritters to act as a shield and sword is a waste when instead we could create thousands of new Jaegers and drown the mortals in fire." Honestly I found myself leaning towards Linnan's proposal, that the third generation be primarily made up of Jaegers and Attenaters. We needed the numbers and while the Ritters and Marchenfurst were valuable components of my army I quite simply didn't have the resources to continuously create hundreds more of them to fill the line.
A line that could be just as easily manned by Jaegers for much cheaper and with less loss from everyone of them that died. It was better to lose a single soul with every death, than two, that was simple math and Linnan was supported by the majority of the other Lords. I wasn't expecting Dyrraths intervention in this matter. "Lord Linnan, Lord Vannem, both of you have spoken at length on this subject in my presence, the fact that you have the audacity to have this argument in front of our master is an embarrassment, especially when you both know that we already came to an agreement on this matter." His words confused me, the two of them had been arguing for the better part of an hour and no one had bothered to stop them, and what agreement did they come to beforehand?
Before I could ask the obvious Dyrrath spoke once more, this time to me. "My Lord, this humble servant and the rest of your loyal vassals have a plan in place that we have come together to create. We believe it to be the best use of our resources and your abilities in the war against the mortals." He waved forward another lord, Celras I believed her name was, she was one of my best with divination and illusion. "Celras, please kneel before your creator and give him our plan directly." The Fey woman nodded and knelt before me, giving me a nice view from above before placing her hands on my knees.
Knowledge flooded into my mind. Plans upon plans, timelines, resource lists, graphs, and even a powerpoint filled my head. All of it dealing with our conquest and how we could best use our current resources to fight against the encroaching hordes. I sat there for a few minutes digesting what my creations had come up with and I didn't even try to stop the smile that spread across my face. Oh yes, this would work.
-
Across the hive spires' underground battle raged between cultist and hunter, It had been two months since the failed assault that had spurred both their cultist's and the hunter's into a new level of escalation. While the order from on high had demanded they stop conscripting civilians so as to avoid the wrath of the guard, it had been too little too late as they had already brought a million new recruits into their ranks.
She knew they were ill-equipped, ill-trained mutts that weren't worth the small vestiges of power that had been wasted brainwashing them; she and the rest of the council had deemed it a needed sacrifice. The hunters as they had been labeled had vastly changed from the hunters of the past. While their assaults were still sudden they were no longer unexpected, and the cult was pushing them back on nearly every front, regaining a full two miles of under hive from their clutches, regaining much needed resources that had been lost.
They had even been able to recapture a singular factory from which they were able to produce basic auto guns to equip their forces. Melee weapons had been considered but the hunters were far too powerful in melee combat for their hordes to actually be effective, while actually closing into melee was near impossible without their own consent in the matter.
The Hunters had seen their efforts and responded. Violently. On the second day, of the second week, of the second month of their conflict she received the reports. Hundreds of new attacks had destroyed hundreds of positions and killed thousands of cultists, it was the largest assault in the history of their conflict so far and it had proven to her and the rest of her comrades that the hunters weren't simple insects to be crushed under the weight of human numbers.
Reports flooded in on the tactical changes the hunters were now employing as well, small unit tactics had seemingly been their bread and butter before, utilizing surprise and superior skill to destroy small outposts and bases first before surrounding larger bases and hitting them from all sides. It had been effective until they simply began garrisoning these various bases and outposts with hundreds and thousands of cultists that simply overwhelmed the hunters.
They had seemingly completely abandoned that doctrine the moment it no longer served their purposes, even if they still used said tactics on a smaller, more situational scale. Now they came in waves reminiscent of the guards tactics, using various squad level movements and larger tactical maneuvering the hunters fought them like a real army. Lines clashed, men fought and died in fire fights, and running combat was the name of the day.
The days when catching even a glimpse of a hunter was a miracle were long over, now their soldiers engaged openly in combat, using their superior range and skill to keep distance while those green knights of theirs' acted as bullet sponges and shock troopers all in one. It was frustrating, they had been so close to completely shattering the hunters that she had felt their desperation in every defense they set up before being completely overwhelmed.
Now the roles were reversed, thousands of hunters swarmed the line, matching their numbers with sheer overwhelming firepower and skill. After a week their line had broken, the cult was on the retreat in nearly all sectors and the hunters were using their new tactics and numbers to completely crush all of their resistance, only the sectors connecting to and controlling the factory they relied on for new equipment had been saved, but it was under constant assault and she had no idea when Jelik's defense would fail.
Not all was lost for the cult however, they still had hundreds of thousands of cultists to call upon deep in their territories that were being trained and equipped with everything they had available. They would act as the basis of the cult's upcoming counter attack and if all went well, a soft sponge to absorb the majority of the hunt's counter-counter attack which they knew would come not long after. She and the rest of her comrades had quickly stopped relying on their numbers carrying the day when the line broke.
Now their primary hope lay in a different source, Ulam the crazy bastard had somehow struck a bargain with one of the angels and it promised them a legion of their gods' children. All they needed to do was hold out for another month and the legion would come through the holy warp and deliver the cult and the surrounding world into eternal pleasure. The higher echelons of the cult had been left out of the plan, they couldn't be trusted, not with her paranoia at an all time high.
Soon the hunters would be destroyed and the world would fall to their gods angels. A month, thats all they needed.
-
General Urias Zacheriah wasn't in a good mood. The local governor had died to an assassin's blade and his obviously corrupted son had taken command of the hive, though he knew in truth it was that Slaaneshi wench Lafe in control. It had taken all of his considerable willpower to not kill them both on the spot and order his regiment to begin a general purge of the hive.
However despite his rank, he was still but a servant to the Imperium and when the orders had come from on high to let the citizens of Ulanir hang themselves on their own rope so that the regiments kept on standby could come in unopposed and completely rip out the rot that had corrupted this world in the time that it had been out of the Imperiums loving grip. He personally didn't support the plan, it would be a waste of lives and resources that could be better used elsewhere.
But he was a general in service to the god emperor, and he would do his duty and follow the orders given to him. Even if every time that slaaneshi slut looked at him he wanted to cave her face in.
The cult wasn't what had put him in a bad mood however, no that was the reports of some new and unknown alien race that looked suspiciously Aeldari appearing deep in the hives under levels, apparently they had begun a war of sorts with the cult and gangs that infested the various sub sectors. They had begun a rapid expansion across the hives under levels and despite the best efforts of the gangs and cults the hunters as the interrogated cultists had called them showed no sign of slowing down their expansion.
Sure they had faced setbacks and failure as was only due mankind's enemies, but they had proven themselves highly adaptable, supremely skilled at war fighting, and dangerous psykers. All traits shared with the Eldar that he despised. The fact their numbers had apparently increased exponentially in the past month almost forced his hand, but the response of the cult to their expansion had given him hope that the cult would ultimately triumph and deal with the problem for him.
If not? Well the destruction of a single hive and its environs was an acceptable enough loss to the Imperium, especially if it disrupted and Aeldari plot in the making.
Yes, yes that would be his excuse, he could feel his mood improving already from the thought. Now all he had to do was leave the hive and Ulanir itself to its fate and soon enough he would have all the justification he needed to level the heretics and disgusting Aeldari both.