Legends of the Smoke Jaguars Chapter 143
A vicious blow caught Damchak under the left pauldron, wielded by one who knew well the weaknesses of Mark VI armour. Damchak felt a hot lance penetrate his shoulder as the combat blade drove into the soft undersheath of his armpit. Instinctively he rolled with it, riding the blow and letting it stagger him. That action prevented the knife from reaching his heart but the force of it sent him crashing into the bookshelf behind. Wooden stacks went over as two Transhumans fell against them, their combined weight sending musty tomes and yellowed scrolls tumbling to the polished wooden floor. Ancient wisdom or heathen lies, it mattered not, Damchak had more pressing issues.
The Dark Tusk writhed against him, trying to push the knife deeper. The Smoke Jaguar however slammed his elbow outwards, despite the searing agony of the wound, smashing the vile face away. The knife loosened and Damchak managed to bring his right arm about, fist clenched to land a blow that sent his enemy crashing backwards. Knotted barbs of razorwire scraped the First's nerve endings as the knife ripped free but Damchak's rage was the greater. With fire in his hearts he drew back his arm and opened his hand, letting the claws flow with lightning.
The actinic glow lit a scene of foulest murder. In the Novan library Umbral Flame did give battle to their treacherous cousins. Two breeds of shadowy Space Marines, battling to the last. Gas-fired bolt rounds spat silent death, as knives grew wet with blood and fists and boots were brought to bear. The supposed stealth infiltration had become a tragedy of epic madness, as evidenced by Caulli's lifeless body, laid out on the ground with a knife in his back.
Damchak looked upon his Kinsmen's killer and felt rage burn hot enough to scorch his soul. The Dark Tusk Sergeant was scrambling to his feet, intending to continue the fight. Mere minutes ago he had been counted a friend and ally, but now his perfidious spirit was revealed. Damchak knew not where this betrayal flowed from, what foul cause the Dark Tusk had embraced, but it mattered not. A Smoke Jaguar lay dead and the scales of justice must be balanced, an eye for an eye, a life for a life.
Damchak leapt into the attack, sweeping his claw about. The shining tips cleaved the air, promising certain retribution but the Dark Tusk dove aside and avoided death by the narrowest of margins. Damchak swept about with a backhanded blow but the advantage of a power weapon was lost and his arm crashed harmlessly against the pauldron of his foe. In return the Dark Tusk smashed a fist into his hip, making him stagger, then a punch to the helm. Fortunately the angle did not permit the knife hand to reach, else Damchak would be dead.
The Dark Tusk fell back, his knife held close. Damchak made to follow but his blood was boiling and his left armpit was enflamed with tanglethorn bindings. Poison on the blade, polluting his blood, it must be so. Damchak felt muscle cramping and his brow bead with sweat, but he refused to admit weakness. Though his left arm hung limp, his soul demanded vengeance and he would not be denied.
The First launched himself at the Dark Tusk, silent yet deadly in motion. His claw swept high then down, but the foe stepped into the blow and spoiled the hunt-kill. Damchak was thrown off balance as they crashed together, then he gasped as the knife sank into his belly, driving broken Ceramite splinters into his gut. A second lance of fire in his flesh, the heat of poison attacking his cells and his throat fought to close. Damchak's flesh sought to collapse in feeble surrender, but his will was not tarnished. Deeper than the pain of his body lay the wound unto his soul, the fury of loss firing the call of vengeance. The spirit of Corax was with him and the presence of the Dark One rose in his mind, not in conflict but trothed to a shared cause: the death of the heart-foe.
Damchak's left arm shot out and wrapped around the wrist of the Dark Tusk. The traitor froze in confusion, stunned his poison had not crippled the Smoke Jaguar. Damchak took full advantage of his disbelief, sweeping his claw upwards, severing the arm above the elbow. The Dark Tusk staggered backwards, blood gushing from the stump before Larraman cells could staunch it. Damchak didn't give him time to recover, slashing his claw across the betrayer's front. This time the talons bit deep, tearing through chest and belly, opening five lethal canyons in his enemy's torso, allowing entrails to spill to the ground in a red heap.
The Dark Tusk fell into his own piled offal as Damchak pulled the poisoned knife from his belly. His body shook as genhanced organs went to work but his attention was taken wholly by the smell that wafted through his respirator. Blood and bile and faeces, these were the scents of death he knew, but there was another scent mixed in. A sour-milky smell of rotting putrefaction, laced with impossible flavours of the unknowable. Chaos, the mark of ruin bloomed inside the Dark Tusk and suddenly Damchak understood the reason for their betrayal.
His head came up and he saw his Kinsmen beset by their treacherous counterparts, not kin anymore, Chaos Marines. Prowlmates lay here and there, their lifesigns weak in Damchak's vox-feed but of more concern was Nizca. He lay flat on his back, trying to fend off a Dark Tusk with the length of his meltagun. The fight was impossible and without aid Nizca's saga would be brought to its end, but Damchak was already moving.
Legs shaking, lungs rasping on poison the First lurched to intervene, driving his claw for the Dark Tusk's back. There was no elegance to this, no beauty in the attack, merely blind stabbing, but the Archeotech relic was finely wrought and the tips of his talons punched into the Traitor's back without resistance. Damchak grunted as he drove his hand against the lumbar, under the backpack, angled upwards to penetrate the diaphragm and lungs. The Dark Tusk froze as death came, then fell away, leaving Damchak stumbling on failing knees.
"Beware!" Nizca yelled as he whipped his Meltagun about and pulled the trigger. So insane had the day been Damchak thought for an instant his Prowlmate had turned against him, but the beam flew past his shoulder and struck another Dark Tusk who had been closing from behind. So enfeebled was the First he could not have saved himself, but the melta was the bane of flesh and armour alike. The Dark Tusk's upper half was obliterated, everything above the sternum reduced to red gobbets that dripped upon the floor. In an instant the traitor was undone, left to topple backwards and crash into the floor.
Damchak sagged as the poison fought his Astartes physiology, his eyes were dim and his knees bending but Nizca was rising to catch him. "Kinsmen, you bleed!"
"Must fight..." Damchak hissed as he sagged against Nizca's bulk.
"You are translated," Nizca urged, "Laid low by foul venom."
"The Gods of ruin are upon us... all must fight..."
"I..." Nizca breathed, "Don't think you have to."
Damchak forced his head up and beheld a marvel. Between the pair they had eliminated three Dark Tusks, three more lay unmoving among the wounded Smoke Jaguars, but the remaining four were engaged with a ghost. Amid the toppled shelves and piles of strewn books a blur moved, slashing and hacking at their plate. Tikal, the laughing fool was fighting four Dark Tusks at once, and he was winning.
His shadow-path had never been stronger, mutated as it was, his form shrouded by false images and echoes of motion. He seemed to have six arms and seven legs, his torso indistinguishable amid blurring afterimages and his Obsidian Blade was a glittering comet of shadowed motion. The Dark Tusks didn't know which image was real, where Tikal ended and the illusions began. This went beyond Shadow-path, into the realms of the Chapter's Seers. There had always been a hint of supernatural about the Smoke Jaguar's unique inheritance from Corax, more potent and suffocating than in other Chapters, but seeing this truly convinced Damchak there was more than the mere suggestion of the Psyker in Tikal's blood.
A Dark Tusk thrust at where he thought Tikal was, only to find his arm passing through a shade. A whipping streak of dark light was the youth's blade coming for his neck, parting head from shoulders in a single strike. The other three Dark Tusks piled in, silently seeking to end this threat, but somehow Tikal was already behind them, stabbing over a backpack to drive the Transonic weapon into the gap between gorget and helm. A second Dark Tusk fell but the other two threw caution to the wind. They piled in, hacking madly at anything and everything. Damchak struggled to follow their traded blows as afterimages flickered like a bad pict-reel, but somehow Tikal's sundered helm fell to the ground.
A momentary dread at the thought Tikal was undone, but then one of the blurring images became real and plunged a knife into an eye lens. A third Dark Tusk was brought to justice and the last swung wide, trying to fend off a morass of falsehoods. He fought deceptions and shadow, unable to tell what was real and what was not. He discovered the truth when Tikal's hand grabbed his head from behind, pulling the chin up to expose the throat and whip the edge of his Obsidian Blade across the larynx. Blood spilled freely, another life ended, and the last of the Dark Tusks was no more.
Stillness fell upon the library but not silence. Distant alarums wailed and the pounding of feet many levels below told that the noise of the fight had alerted the Novans. Even now Wardsmen flooded the Library, seeking intruders. The Smoke Jaguars could not fight so many, they must be away. The objective had been lost the second the Dark Tusks turned on them, but that paled in comparison to the greater mission. Word of this treachery must be taken to the Shade-Lord, and any other Dark Tusks put under guard, if they had not turned already.
"We must be away," Damchak ordered, "Gather our wounded, those that can walk aid those that bleed freely."
"You need aid," Nizca warned.
"My strength returns," Damchak lied, "Bring Caulli's body, the Genewrights must harvest his legacy."
"You sway as the newborn," Nizca argued.
"A First knows no weakness, thus it is written, thus shall it be!"
Nizca respected his orders and moved to collect their dead Kinsman. Damchak could barely walk but knew they had bare minutes to withdraw. Umbral Flame must be gone before the Novan's found them but some things could not be delayed. Tikal knelt amid the ruin of his foes, pressing his left palm to the pooled blood and then inspecting his palm as if he'd never seen it before. He seemed unaware of his surroundings, lost in a strange dream, and even now his outline seemed indistinct and vague.
Damchak lurched over and placed a hand on his pauldron, "Tikal, you fought as the ghost of Corax himself, but your Shadow-path has grown beyond all bounds. You must submit yourself to the judgment of the Seers. The Psyker cannot walk as others do, if you are touched by the warp then..."
Damchak's tongue froze and his hand whipped back as Tikal's head came up. The boy was changed, his youthful visage marked by unspeakable sorrow. Despair hung upon his brow and anguish lay upon him as a shroud, but this was nothing compared to his eyes. Black within black, no colour, no hint of white to be seen. Amongst the oldest Smoke Jaguars such traits reflected the Primarch's face, but in one so young it could mean only one thing. A terrible flaw in their gene-seed, rarely spoken of and yet dreaded by all. Damchak had been wrong, this was not a Psyker trait, it was something worse. He looked upon his Kinsman and gasped, "The curse of the Sable Brand!"