A/N: Review responses are in my forums as normal. Thanks to everyone who read and reviews.
Chapter Forty-Two: Manibus Impiorum Me Tradidit
The contrails of drop ships streaked across the evening sky, lit like firebrands by the sun that had already disappeared over the horizon, until the ships tracking the fire themselves fell below the terminus of daylight.
Taylor counted hundreds of them.
Gaunt was in a rushed, emergency meeting with his surviving senior officers, desperately trying to plan some type of defense. Taylor knew there would be none. Sometimes, the bad guys simply won.
She felt as much as heard her other self step beside her on the edge of the town. The fiery contrails of the drop ships still crisscrossed the sky, though as the planet continued its rotation a veil of night was quickly covering them.
"This ever happen to you?" she asked.
Sabbat nodded. "Herador. It was a trap. Falturnus warned me. I walked right into it anyway, thinking I was unbeatable. Funny thing is, we still won. I died before I learned the casualty count, but I did know before I died that we won. It wasn't until a few days ago that I looked in the chronicles. Seventy-four percent casualties, including the White Scars that fought with me. You?"
"Happens all the time. The important part is just to make sure someone shoots me before they get me."
Sabbat blinked. "Really?"
Taylor looked over her shoulder to make sure they were alone, and then undid the seal between her tunic and pants enough to reveal the small of her back. Despite the moonlit night, she knew Sabbat with her Bifrost eyes would see clearly.
The saint gasped. "The Life Rune! That's…that's the key rune! It's been with you this whole time? I just have a scar!"
Taylor righted her uniform. "Willing to bet our other third is missing it, too. Dad explained it to me, right after he buried the two trees in concrete and rooted out the last of our church. He threw me into a prison during the Heresy. He told me if Chaos ever got a hold of me, they might be able to get you and our other third too. Imagine Telos as a chaos god. So, kill me first, please."
Sabbat shook her head. "I don't think I can, Taylor. My power would just slide off you."
"A bullet wouldn't. Just shoot me."
"Oh, right."
They went back to looking at the shower of enemy soldiers and chaos marines. "You know, Saint Sabbat would be preparing herself for the final battle. But I'm just not ready to give up yet. I guess I'm more Telos of the Trees now than I am the saint."
Taylor snorted. "Telos of the Trees? Of the trees? Really?"
Sabbat stared at her a moment, offended. "What's wrong with it? It was a pre-industrial society! And the trees were actual gods! It also sounds different in Gothic."
Taylor bit back her laughter. "Right. You're right. It just sounded a little…"
"Pretentious?"
Taylor nodded, only to sober. "Mother always said she wasn't above a little theater now and then. We never knew what she meant…"
"Until much later," Sabbat agreed. "And that's it. I was a Vanir goddess in a world of passive divinity living among a primitive, warring people. I never wanted to rule directly."
"Of course not. Dad warned us about god-kings. Just look at the Emperor."
"Right. But they became my people and I wanted to guide them. The god trees accepted me as kin. They had a spiritual shield around the planet, and before I surrendered my divinity I could even…"
Sabbat went completely still. Taylor didn't bother to ask–she knew she looked the same exact way when she was having a sudden thought or revelation. She just waited while her other third worked it through in her mind.
"We need to find Zweil," Sabbat said. "Now! Someone who's familiar with the area."
"Not Zweil," Taylor said. "A group of us came up after Gaunt. Your machine worked too well, pulled us all like flies to day-old meat. One was a local esholi–Sanian. She said she was raised around here."
"Do you know where?"
"Well, her saint's been reborn. I know she came with the column, so she's probably in the city's temple."
Sabbat looked over Taylor into the town itself. Like most of the communities in the western continent of the world, Bhavnagar did not have many tall or imposing buildings, and was spread out over a relatively large area. It was an agricultural center on a shrineworld that somehow managed to be spared the mass, planetary monocrop approach of most dedicated agriworlds that fed the uncountable masses of humanity.
Whatever she saw with her bifrost eyes caused her to reach out and grab Taylor's hand, only to jerk back in alarm. "Oh…!"
"Forgot about the whole blank part?"
Sabbat forced a smile. "You hide it well. Come on, I need to see something!"
They didn't quite run, but they walked very briskly. The wide-eyed, frightened soldiers of the Tanith First and Pardus Armored watched the two of them closely, some bowing in respect. Sabbat healed all two hundred plus casualties of the battle to take the city in a whopping two minutes, and it definitely left an impression on the men.
"Where're you going?" Varl called.
"Just following the Beati," Taylor called back.
It was enough to quiet any further questions. The basilica was easily the largest structure in the town, forming a large brick dome with the Imperial aquila in a place of honor above the wide, red-painted doors. Sabbat rushed through, barely even pausing to open them, and Taylor rushed in behind.
This basilica looked wildly different than the one she spent the night in back in Doctrinopolis. It had seating for the townspeople, and an altar over which hung a ceramic effigy of Sabbat in full saintly garb–her power armor, and green-painted ethereal wings and halo. It struck Taylor how close to her own face the artist managed to sculpt the statue.
But behind it, in a dedicated alcove that took up almost the entire dome, was a copse of alien trees. They were the same as what Taylor saw under the shrinehold.
The young student who helped guide the Wounded Wagon to Bhavnager was still there. She'd chosen to stay with the wounded and so never traveled to the Shrinehold. Her name was Sanian, and she looked up now with wide eyes and a cry of startlement when she saw her beloved Saint walking so quickly to her.
She quickly prostrated herself.
A lot had changed between them from when they split, but a small part of Taylor felt relieved that Sabbat didn't enjoy the show of piety. Instead, she knelt down beside the girl. "Don't," she told Sanian. "Don't kneel, stand and join me instead. You're Sanian, and you were born in this area?"
"Yes, Beati," Sanin said. She had to blink back tears.
"Are there other of these trees left outside of Bhavnager?"
"I…yes. There are dozens across the western continent. Less in the east." When Sabbat continued to wait, quietly encouraging her, Sanian continued. "I know there is at least one in the Fortress Convent of the Sisters of the Crimson Bough, on the far edge of the Eastern continent, but they were hit first during the invasion. I don't know if it still stands."
Sabbat looked back over her shoulder to Taylor. Sanian followed the gaze, at first confused but then letting her features relax into one of faithful acceptance. "You were of the Saint! I knew it!"
"It's a long story," Taylor told the young woman. "What're you thinking, Sabbat?"
"An escape route," she said. "I had to let go of so much of what I learned, before. But it's all come back. I can open a passage through the trees, to at least get us on another continent and buy some time."
"What about the armored units? Can we save them?"
"We'll figure something out."
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
"It would be a localized warp gate," Sabbat explained to Gaunt and his officers minutes later. "Similar to teleportation, except we'd be walking through. Sanian told me there was a convent fortress on the far continent that has a tree to anchor the other side."
Ayatani Zweil nodded, his old, bearded face brimming with excitement. "There is! The Order of the Crimson Bough. The order was dedicated to you, Beati!"
"But the fortress was subjected to orbital bombardment by Pater Sin's forces during the initial invasion," Gaunt said. "Our general briefing indicated the fortress was mostly destroyed."
"The tree still stands, though," Sabbat said.
"More importantly, it's on the opposite side of the planet from all the scary monsters coming to kill us," Taylor pointed out. "It might buy some time. Even if every astropath in the sector didn't know Sabbat was reborn, they know that Chaos is converging on Hagia. No Imperial tactician would ignore something like that."
Gaunt looked drawn and harried, with that same hard angle to his eyes he had when he led them into the field at Vervunhive. He had a handful of armored vehicles and under two thousand men, and they could see outside that the enemy was landing tens of thousands that were just hours away, if even that much.
The decision was made for them when the ground shook under their feet; seconds later came the report of a massive explosion.
Taylor didn't have a vox bead since she was technically not a part of the regiment any more, but she could see Gaunt was getting the report. "Enemy aircraft have found us," he said grimly. "Auspex readings have heavy troop movement less than an hour away."
He looked around his men. "Captain Woll?"
"We'll fight to the last tank, Colonel, but any enemy armored force like what we saw here before would have us in flames in minutes. If there's a way to buy time, let's buy it."
The colonel's gaze fell on Hark. "It is an honor to die for the Emperor," the commissar said. "But it's more useful to kill for Him and die later."
"Corbin? Rawne?"
"Let's get the feth out of here," Major Rawne said, all but snarling the word. "Begging the Beati's pardon."
"The Beati fething agrees with you," Sabbat said.
Gaunt, meanwhile, continued to study his people. Seeing what he wanted, he nodded firmly. "Gol, Rawne, mine everything. I want every step those monsters take to explode. But do it quickly. Captain Woll, get everything loaded you can–as much extra promethium you can, and make way to the basilica. Colm, spread the word. Have our people scavenge every bit of resource they can in the next twenty minutes and then report to the temple. Beati, what do you need from me?"
"Just to be ready."
She turned and walked quickly out of the converted schola they were using as a headquarters. "What I don't get is why they just don't pound us with artillery, or from orbit?" Captain Woll said.
Gaunt looked at Taylor, and she could see he knew the answer. "Gentlemen, we have a lot to do and no time. Let's get to it. Miss Hebert, with me, please."
The officer corps broke up to attend their various tasks. Some were yelling orders before they even left the schola. Gaunt walked quickly, and Taylor matched his stride. "They're after you," he said, confirming his thoughts. "The traitor marines at the shrinehold wanted you, personally."
"They want Sabbat to die, but yes. I'm the reason why they aren't just shelling us into ashes."
"Because of what you know of the emperor?"
Taylor shrugged. "Something like that. You probably already know too much, Colonel. Psykers could pull the thoughts from your mind."
"And if they catch you?"
"Shoot me, colonel. Aim for the head. I'll be reborn somewhere far away. Hopefully, anyway. But don't let them catch me alive. For all our sakes."
A pair of enemy fighters came screeching overhead. They didn't fire any shots, but simply scanned the city. A loud, sonic boom tore their eyes away from the fighters to the night sky above. Two streaks of fire were burning through the night.
"Damned," Gaunt said. He touched his vox bead. "This is Gaunt. All personnel report to the Basilica immediately. Drop pods in bound. All previous orders are rescinded. Evacuate immediately!"
That news lit a fire under everyone. Imperial Guard didn't use drop pods–mortals rarely could survive the landing. That meant chaos marines. Which meant death.
Gol and Major Rawne left off their mining duties and sprinted toward the basilica with their platoons in tow. Captain Woll's handful of armored machines was already moving, while the Tanith First sprinted headlong.
"Get snipers on the basilica roof!" Gaunt shouted into his vox, running now.
"Flamers and heavy weapons at the ready!"
The pods kept falling, like the fists of an angry god. Taylor ran by instinct–she could live forever, and never be able to fight one of the Emperor's rebellious mutant children. Ahead, she could see men queuing at the basilica. Sabbat hadn't managed to open her warp gate yet, evidently.
They ran out of time.
The first pod hit with the same force as an artillery shell. Even with augmetic grav plating, if ever one needed proof that Astartes were not human, it was that landing. It would have broken the legs and spines of any other human being.
The doors to the house-sized pod opened, and nightmares came rushing out. Taylor recognized the symbols on their armor instantly with a sense of dread in her stomach. Word Bearers. But it was the monster in their midsts that made her want to scream. Because she recognized him.
"Gaunt, run!"
"I see you, Daughter of Terra!" The Dark Apostle's voice reverberated through the air like the shockwave of their landing. "I saw you then, as well, sneaking away like a serpent from Terra at the hands of a filthy xenos. I could have shown you the truth of existence–the only truth that matters. But finally, you have run out of places to hide."
As the monster spoke, his six Word Bearer companions ran toward Taylor and Gaunt. It seemed wrong that such large, ungainly creatures could move so quickly. Gaunt bravely pulled his weapon and began to fire, his cherished power sword in his other hand. But Taylor knew he would buy only a moment's distraction, if even that.
Abruptly the air erupted in a wall of coruscating lightning. The shock of it blew both she and the colonel back off their feet. After she blinked back the blots of color from her eyes, she saw the six chaos marines writhing under the power of the plasma. It did not end, and seemed to fall directly from the open sky above them.
Just like the chaos marines at the shrinehold, somehow the monsters survived and continued moving forward toward them despite the power that would have reduced humans to ash. "Their armor is alive!" Gaunt cried.
That's when Taylor realized the enemy armor was possessed. As a blank, she didn't perceive warp energy the same as Gaunt. The lightning was not warp sorcery, she was sure it was Vanir magic. But the chaos monsters were themselves wrapped in warp sorcery.
"Brace yourself," she warned the colonel. Standing, she forced herself to take a breath, and then unleashed her own anti-power.
Not sorcery. But the opposite. She could feel the air around her reacting to the nullification of the Warp. Gaunt grunted from the disturbing feeling; but the chaos-touched marines screamed as her null field reached them. It was as powerful as the sorcery that preserved them, and at its touch the power that let them withstand Sabbat's rage faded.
All six died almost instantly, and only then did the lightning end.
"And the Anathema's whore finally shows herself," the seventh and final monster called, unaffected by the death of his companions. "Very impressive. But I have killed Terran gods before. You are nothing compared to Erda, mother of the primarchs!"
Taylor saw only blurs in the air around the chaos marine, whose face had been mangled by knives and mutation to that of a skinless demon in rotting, demon-infused power armor. But a nearby tree shattered into splinters that flashed into fire so intensely it burned to ash before it fell to the ground.
Demons–true demons. Not possessed or mutated flesh, but creatures born solely from the warp. Whatever rituals the Dark Apostle used, they were powerful.
"Is that how you killed her?" Taylor called back. "Erda guided humanity from the mud. She was the mother of the first, oldest human civilization. And you murdered her for what? To try and prove you're more than just a brain-washed asshole?"
"Who is that?" Sabbat asked as she reached Taylor's and Gaunt's side.
"Erebus, first whipping boy of Lorgar. Ask him about that time Horus cut off his face for being an asshole."
"Empty words from an empty soul," Erebus said. "How you have wasted your eons, child! I am the Hand of Destiny, and I have come to show you your new future."
Sabbat began chanting. The language made Taylor's ears ache. She realized that her other self was speaking a godly tongue–probably Vanir Cant or some other First Language. And just like it hurt that she couldn't read the runes that covered Sabbat's body, it frustrated her that she couldn't understand her birth language any more.
The demons came forward. The ground split with their ethereal steps–foul-smelling rot spread from the steps of one, fire from another. Their very existence was a violation of the material world around them.
Something much bigger violated the soil between them and the demons. The ground between them erupted with a shriek that sent shivers down her spine. A massive claw almost the size of a chimera ripped up from the ground, followed by a second, and that followed by a head the size of a Leman Russ tank.
Behind her Gaunt was shouting something and armor and men continued to run toward the basilica, but all Taylor could do is stare at the massive, black-scaled creature that clawed itself from the soil.
"Is that a fucking dragon?" Taylor muttered.
Sabbat ignored her, glaring instead at the traitor marine. "Your first mistake, boy, was stepping foot on my world." The Beati shouted over the din of the dragon and the angry screech of the demons. "The second was summoning demons here. This is not a demon. This is not a dragon. This is Voxtchtatrcka. He is a god, you fool. A true god of this world. A god of death, for all the dragons that once filled the skies of Hagia. And like all gods, he will not tolerate the presence of demons on his land!"
The dragon was the size of a troop transport. It rose into the night sky towering over the shimmering apparitions of the four demons. With a piercing shriek that filled the sky, it released a solid column of near blue-white-hot flame down on the demons.
A hand gripped Taylor's arm and pulled. "Get that aura back in," Sabbat hissed.
Taylor scrambled to her feet as Sabbat pulled her. Gaunt was already ahead of them, waving his people desperately through what appeared to be a blasted-open wall of the basilica. Within the structure, Taylor could see strange, ethereal light that defied description that emanated directly from the trunk of the massive, red-leafed tree.
"Did you just summon a fucking dragon?"
"The memory of one!" Sabbat sounded breathless as they ran. "Even the memory of gods have power. Just the potential of them. Voxtchtatrcka was the last living god of the dragons of this world. He never died, he just faded into the world tree after the last dragons perished. But he won't last long."
"Why didn't you fight them yourself?"
"I'd have lost!" Sabbat sounded shaken. "What do you think killed me on Heredor? I'm only a third, Taylor. I might have been able to kill one or two. I can kill chaos marines in the right circumstances. But that bastard was summoning four true demons direct from the Warp! If what he said was true, and he killed Erda? I don't know who Erebus is, but I don't like him!"
"No one likes him!" Taylor called. "Even his own people hate him!"
The ground shook as more drop pods fell. It was foolish to think that with ships in orbit the enemy would wait for ground movement. She could see the pods falling all around the city, spilling out a dozen chaos marines each. One revealed a massive, terrifying terminator marine who immediately started firing into the fleeing guard.
A row of thick shrubbery ripped its way from the ground, the tangle of wood immediately shattering from the explosive mass-reactive bolts while shielding the men. Even as they ran, Sabbat's hands were waving about in intricate symbols and her lips were moving silently. For a brief moment her glamor faded and the starlight blue of her bifrost eyes shone through as she summoned a near serpentine cloud of blue-green haze.
It struck one Word Bearer who had run closer than the others. The mutated creature howled like an animal as the strange mist wrapped around him and his warp-infused armor.
"What is that?"
"My version of the tenth plague," Sabbat said. "Only it doesn't care about birth order. Come on, their armor's resisting it but it'll slow them down!"
They reached the basilica. Most of the column was already through–Gaunt himself stood at the glowing structure of white wood that seemed to frame the tank-sized door. He was waving a Chimera through it, but looking back at the two of them.
"I don't know why, but I thought you'd be able to steamroll them," Taylor shouted as they ran. "You have all the magic!"
"And if I had time to enchant some armor and weapons, I'd do better," came the snarky reply. "But I'm still squishy! I'm only a little stronger than a typical man, and the last time I tangled with demons I died. And I don't get the autosave like you, you know!"
They reached Gaunt, but Sabbat didn't go through immediately. Instead, she started chanting again. This was a different language than before. "Go through," she told Gaunt and Taylor. "I'm going to leave the bastards a gift."
"Beati!" Gaunt set his chin stubbornly.
"If I don't, they'll follow us," she told the colonel.
Taylor grabbed his arm. "Come on. We can't help her."
They stepped through the shimmering field within the frame of the white tree bark…into a forest.
"Huh, this was not what I was expecting," Taylor admitted.
Ahead, on a narrow trail, they could see the chimera that preceded them. Gaunt paused to look back. "That traitor claimed someone named Erda was mother of the primarchs. What did he mean?"
Taylor shrugged. "Pretty much what he said. Erda helped the Emperor create the primarchs. They had a falling out. She died around the Heresy, right after Malcador sent me to her so she could get me off world."
Sabbat stumbled through the gate with deep breaths. "Look away!" she cried, before spinning around and raising both her hands.
Taylor grabbed Gaunt and pushed him down and away. There was a flash of simultaneous heat and cold that made her skin tingle and her muscles ache, and for a moment she tasted plaid and heard Dutch chocolate.
And then it was over.
