Revelation Chapter 38: Quia Sagittae Domi, a Warhammer + Worm Crossover fanfic

A/N: Second of this double post. Thanks again for reading and reviewing.

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Quia Sagittae Domini

Taylor had one lasrifle power cell left. The remains of her platoon were little better off. She heard rumors that the armor was running critically low on shells and power for the energy weapons as well. The enemy pulled back under the terrifying skies, but they would regroup, and when they did, the Imperials would run out of ammunition well before the enemy ran out of infantry or armor.

She walked tiredly to collect the shattered remnants of her platoon. Her head throbbed so painfully she was seeing halos, and every joint in her body ached as if she were ancient and riddled with the arthritis that usually hit her if she lived long enough.

They refortified right in front of the first wall of the shrinehold. There were paths that would let some infantry access the rear of the structure, but the path was narrow enough and their available forces were slim enough, that they decided not to dedicate weapons to defend it.

No one there had any doubt what was coming.

She had her people co-mingled in fire teams with the other platoons when Captain Ban Daur came out of the shrinehold to find her. "Washton, with me."

Taylor followed wordlessly. The headaches continued, though she thought she was acclimating to the altitude, at least. She noticed Daur moving slowly from his own wounds. He didn't look up at the sky.

"Just us, sir?"

"You, me. Corbec and Dorden. We heard the call."

"Ah. Yes, sir."

With just the two of them walking through the halls, Taylor noticed startled and even shocked expressions on the esholi students and ayatani priests that they passed. Some froze and began praying at the sight of her, just making the whole situation that more awkward. This was the first time she'd been in the shrine with only one other person to distract from her face.

They reached a sizable, domed anteroom. The far side of the room was blocked off by a large, red glossy door with an aquila carved in the pink basalt mantle over it. Within the room she saw Gaunt, Colonel Corbec and Surgeon Dorden. They weren't alone, though. Two ayatani priests stood with the officers. One was the old, bald man with the thin sharp beard that Gaunt seemed to have taken as an advisor on their journey up the mountains.

The other was a weathered, ancient figure as bald as the first, but with an eye augment that left his organic eyes milky and blank. When this man's augmented vision saw her enter and remove her helmet, he made a strange, strangled cry. "It cannot be!"

Gaunt stood staring at her with the same intensity she saw him direct to Asphodel and to the enemy officer he killed earlier. "Sergeant, we find ourselves in a difficult situation. We have sufficient ammunition supplies for perhaps ten minutes of sustained combat, after which we will be fighting enemy tanks with our fists and knives. We've learned that the warp storm over Hagia is the product of the enemy fleet approaching, or so the psychic adepts here at the temple tell me. Let me be blunt. Are you Saint Sabbat?"

This time, the question did not shock her. "Sir, I wish I were, but I'm not."

"You must be!" The old priest with the eye augment leaned forward, hands clasped. "You sound like her! The intonation of your words! The way you moved! Even the cut of your hair and the shade of your eyes! You are her! You must be her!"

"Dorden told me of your discussion," Gaunt said. "I have never seen nor heard anything but praise for your courage and conduct, Sergeant. I've witnessed it personally. I do not believe you are a danger to the regiment. But we are facing extinction. There has to be a reason why we all heard 'sabbat martyr.' There has to be a reason why you look just like her. And Ayatani Zweil has a theory."

"You forgot," the slighter priest said without preamble. "It's been six thousand years. I can't tell you what I did last week, much less where I was when I was a child. You just forgot. We need to remind you."

"That…sounds unpleasant," Taylor said worriedly. "And…I think I would remember leading a crusade across an entire subsector of space."

"We're not talking torture, Jada," Corbec said quickly. "We're talking about giving you things to jog your memory. We're talking about taking you into the sepulcher to look over her things. To see her."

The worst part of it was that Taylor couldn't say with one hundred percent certainty that she wasn't the saint. The similarity was shocking to her. She honestly did not know where she was six thousand years ago. Her lives ran together in a blur, with only a few occasions really standing out. Oddly, it wasn't the wars or the gruesome deaths she remembered, but the quiet moments. Those precious few lives where she chose to have a family. Or make close friends.

But surely she would have remembered leading a crusade? Wouldn't she have?

Some small corner of her mind wanted it to be true. That small, perfectly human part of her that lived over and over again, watching those with power crush those without. That part of her wanted so much to be more than just Taylor Hebert. She wanted to be…what she used to be. To see the truth of things. To feel the wind on her wings and to be able to defend those without hope. She wanted it so badly her eyes stung at the thought.

But the past ten thousand years had taught her, with brutal regularity, that the Saint Taylor of the old Telosian church had to stay dead. She had to remain obscured. "I'm just…Jada," she said. "Just Jada."

"And how long have you been just Jada?" Gaunt said. He still stared at her with burning intensity, but his voice sounded…strangely gentle.

Her hands shook. She turned away from that burning gaze and stared at the glossy red door. Before she could do anything, though, they were interrupted. Major Rawn entered the room without knocking, eyes wide. "Gaunt, you need to see this."

Gaunt looked like he was about to snap, but he caught himself. Taylor too, looked. Rawne was a hard man, and he did not rattle easily. Now, he looked shaken. It was oozing out of his blank expression–the trained face of a man taught not to show fear to his subordinates.

The colonel stood, but didn't immediately follow. Instead, he stepped in front of Taylor. "Sergeant, try."

With that, he sped out of the room after Rawne. Corbec followed.

~~Revelation~~

Gaunt held his tongue as he strode through the shrinehold. Rawne walked beside him, Corbec a step behind. They reached the main door and stepped out into the middle of their reinforcements. The remaining pieces of Pardus armor were arrayed in front of the stony step in front of the shrinehold walls, with the men bunkered down in between.

His steps faltered when he saw what awaited just a hundred meters away.

"Saint preserve us," he muttered. "Why haven't they attacked?"

"No fething clue, sir," Rawne said.

Gaunt took a deep breath and made his way through the hastily wrought fortifications. He could feel his men's fear; he could almost smell it on the bitter cold wind. He stepped past the most exposed chimera armored transport and past the outermost shallow dugout until he stood exposed himself.

Across from him stood monsters out of myth and nightmare. At the forefront stood a creature scarcely recognizable as human, if indeed it ever was. Towering easily over two meters, the creature wore massive, bulky armor of a dark, crimson color that seethed under the chaos-infused skies like living blood. Greaves rose from its boots almost like the grills of some diabolic transport car, while pauldrons as large as Gaunt's torso flittered in the acidic wind with strips of parchment undoubtedly made from human skin filled with cursed writing.

The creature wore no helm, more's the pity. Horns had erupted from its bare skull, and tubes were crudely sewn into the flesh of its neck. Behind its head, the ancient powerpack of its armor spewed black smoke like prometheum incense. In its right hand it held a cursed crozius, with the eight-pointed star of chaos forming its center.

Behind the first stood ten other such monsters, some helmed, some he wished were. No one was alike, and yet all held a similar uniformity of horror to them. All of them were draped in strips of human leather, a perverted imitation of the prayer strips of true sons of the Emperor. These, Gaunt realized, were Word Bearers. The most fervent cultists of the Dark Gods.

When the leader of the Chaos space marine saw Gaunt, he smiled. Even from a hundred meters, Gaunt could see exposed fangs.

"Hear my words, mortals." The traitor marine's voice slid through the air like putrid oil, penetrating the howling of the wind and the walls of the shrinehold. Even those within could hear it. "I come as an apostle to prepare the way. From the fires of Betrayal unto the blood of revenge, we bring the name of Lorgar, the Bearer of the Word, the favored Son of Chaos, all praise be given to him."

The name of the cursed traitor primarch sent chills down Gaunt's spine. Nearby, he heard moans from one of the dugouts.

The traitor marine continued. "But on this day, this most holy and blessed day, we offer you a prize none have ever received from us. We offer you your lives. We will allow you to leave this place unharmed. Take your weapons. Take your puny machines. Return to the false sanctity of your cities and flee this world. All of you may live. All we ask is that you turn over the Anathema. The cursed one. Turn over the endless that you call Jada Washton."

"The feth did he say?" Corbec muttered.

The feth indeed.

~~Revelation~~

In the back of her mind, Taylor could hear her own voice calling 'sabbat martyr' to her, and she suddenly found herself at the glossy red-painted door. She pushed it open and stared into the sacred final resting place of Saint Sabbat.

All noise fell away, as if she'd entered a whole new universe. The analytical part of her mind let her know the sepulcher was simply shielded against sound, but the absolute silence of the space felt strange after all the war she'd just experienced. Her head throbbed with pain and exhaustion.

A reliquary altar dominated the center of the circular chamber. It was plated in what looked like shell pieces from the car-sized armored chicken-lizard armadillo things the locals called chelons. An artisan used colored shell pieces to create a mosaic of the Sabbat Worlds.

A massive shell, from an animal the size of a tank, provided a cover for the alter block. Within the center of that massive shell, behind the altar, was the reliquary itself. Candles burned all around the transparent coffin that held the ancient body of Saint Sabbat.

Drifting into the room as if drawn, Taylor could see two hardwood stands framing the reliquary, each holding what looked like ancient manuscript.

Put aside your mortal lives. Put aside your mortal loves.

Taylor's hands were shaking. She found herself looking around at oddly ordinary items given a place of honor. A drinking bowl. A quill pen. A herding stick. A single golden acorn. Nearby she saw exquisite, ancient power armor, much like what modern Sisters of Battle war. It looked like it would fit her easily.

What do you want, child?

I want to save them all.

"You would take all humanity under your wings?

A glass casket rested on a bier. Taylor moved as in a dream, memories pounding against her skull like artillery shells. Within the casket, she saw nothing she could recognize. The body was mummified, the flesh desiccated and polished almost like dark oak under the weight of six thousand years. She saw rings on mummified fingers, and a medallion on a sunken chest embossed with the aquila. The gown faded almost white in some spots, blue in others.

"That isn't me," she whispered. "It isn't."

There were voices coming from behind her. A greasy, oily voice that polluted the air. She ignored it.

"You had power," she continued. The words seemed almost drawn from her; she couldn't keep them back. "You led armies. You healed people. You had everything. I know who you are, now. I know what you took from me. I have nothing. Life after life. Death after death. I had the church. Dad promised to protect me and the church, until he didn't any more. Nothing ever gets better. Only worse. You're not me."

"Sergeant, what are you doing?" The old priest Gaunt liked hovered close to her.

"She isn't me," Taylor said louder. "She isn't! She never had to stare down a Thunder Warrior with only three bullets in an old carbine! She never had to watch her children die or get perverted, or her church die, or her worlds die. She isn't me!"

~~Revelation~~

"Sergeant Washton is a valued member of my regiment," Gaunt called back to the monster. He had no doubt some behind him would gladly sacrifice a trooper for the precarious promise of a traitor, but Gaunt knew better. "What possible use could she be to you?"

The monster laughed. The other traitor marines joined him, filling the mountains with the harsh cackle of contempt. "I have dreamed the truth, little man. Visions granted me by my blessed gene-father. I have seen that this Anathema is no mortal. That name she uses is no more hers than she is yours. I was at Terra, boy! My brothers and I fought and threw your false emperor down. And she was there to see it happen. She was there before even I was created; before my blessed gene-father found the Truth and set us all free. She is eternal and unending. She has gone by many names, but always she is the eternal enemy."

"Gaunt," Rawne muttered. "What are they talking about?"

"Do you really not know? That is Malcador the Sigillite's own natural-born daughter you have in that shrine, boy! She has seen the Emperor's face, and spoken his true name with her own lips. She saw the Long Night fall, and saw Terra before mankind lost itself to the true gods of Chaos. We know her true name, just as she knows the Emperor's. Shall you know her true name as well, mortal? For she has many.

"Freyjadottir, she was called. Magic-host and soul taker. During the crusade to throw down your false emperor, many on Terra called her War-daughter, War-ender and Bane to Dragons. Mythrus that was. Over the millennia many called her Peace-Bringer and World-Saver."

Each name thrummed in the air like the beating of a massive drum. Gaunt could feel the rock shaking under his feet from the Warp sorcery of the words.

Except that it wasn't just sorcery. He looked around at the frightened soldiers and saw snow being dislodged from the shaking shrinehold. The entire promontory was shaking in time with the names being delivered.

"What are you doing?" he shouted.

"I do nothing, mortal! It is the one you call Jada Washton's doing. That is why you must surrender her."

~~Revelation~~

The floor underneath Taylor's boots shook; so hard relics began to fall off their displays. She barely noticed.

Every candle in the chamber went out, all at once. A strange, pale green light filled the whole tomb. Holograms of the White Scars space marines that carried Saint Sabbat to her final resting place dissolved like salt before the waves of an ocean. The stone walls here were black, not the pink basalt of the rest of the shrine, and suddenly began to sweat as if exposed to heavy moisture.

Taylor didn't care.

"I was supposed to be Hope!" She screamed, now, over the sound. Tears were running down her face and her head throbbed so hard she could barely stand. "I was supposed to be a god! I saved humanity! I sacrificed everything I had. And all I got was death. Life and death, over and over again. It isn't fair! Why won't you let me die!?"

~~Revelation~~

"She had more names, boy," the traitor marine said. His voice continued to slide effortlessly into the ears and minds of everyone there. "The Virgin Queen, She-Who-Calls-The-Rain and Fate Singer. Ruler of All and Sea-Kin. She was called Two-Trees, Healer of Man and Savior of Worlds. Bringer of Hope."

A piercing whine filled the air, but not from the traitors. Instead, it came from the Shrinehold. Terrified troopers cried out in alarm. The traitor marine just continued to smile and chant. "Rune-Goddess, Star-Weaver, Singer of Life and Death. But above all, Mortal, the name that was worshiped by trillions before being so cruelly silenced by the False Emperor, your little trooper was called Telos! Telos, Goddess of Hope! Hear my call, Telos! Your fate awaits you!"

Behind Gaunt, the Shrinehold seemed to explode in brilliant, blinding white light.

~~Revelation~~

"Why won't you let me die?" Taylor called, overcome. Her head throbbed so badly she could barely see. Each breath was a struggle.

The room shook so violently the two priests behind her lost their footing and fell to the floor. Dorden tried to walk toward her, shouting her name, but tens of thousands of years of pain and loss and anguish spilled out of her mouth in a torrent she couldn't stop or control.

Suddenly a deep gong–a deafening sound–blasted through the room and threw all of them to the ground. Taylor's head rang as if Rawne kicked her. She turned and looked back at the bier and casket.

The chamber was lost under blinding blue-white light. Her mind reverberated from sounds that spanned the entirety of human hearing, as if reality itself was being torn asunder. Perhaps it was.

Just as quickly, the light seemed to sink back down into itself–into two small, shining blue crystals, set in a shockingly familiar face. Taylor lay sprawled over Doc Dorden's legs and found herself staring up at herself–herself as she should have been. Bifrost blue eyes blinked down at her as the goddess she should have been floated over the casket. Instead of familiar black and silver Valkyrie wings, she floated on golden, ethereal wings of pure warp energy. The ancient, familiar marks on her arms, hands and neck glowed brilliantly with blue luminescence. This was Telos.

Floating down on a wave of light and the odd choral, music-like tone of power, she alit to the floor and looked around with a beatific smile. Right until Taylor scrambled back to her feet and slugged her across the chin.

"Why wasn't it me?" She screamed at the goddess as Saint Sabbat stumbled back against the altar. "Why? Why did I have to keep living? Why wasn't it me?"

Powerful arms grabbed her from behind; a male voice shouted, "At ease, sergeant!"

Taylor was lost to it, though. Tens of thousands of years of watching her children die; of watching humanity collapse into ignorance and superstition and death, year after year, overcame her. The woman with all the power she should have had stood slowly, holding her chin. She closed those glowing blue eyes of hers, but still the glow was faintly visible through her eyelids. Until even that light pulled in on itself. Before Taylor's eyes, the goddess shrank down into the person, until it was a second Taylor Hebert standing there in Saint Sabbat's six thousand year old gown. No bifrost eyes. No protective runes.

"Why wasn't it me?" Taylor howled into the deafening silence. "Why? Why wouldn't he let me stay dead?"

Dorden let her go; she collapsed to her knees lost in great, powerful sobs that made everything hurt. A hand took hers. Even through her tears, she stared in fascination because it was her hand. As if a reflection had reached through the mirror to hold her. Her eyes looked up until she stared at herself. The hair, her face. Everything.

The other her pulled. She pulled just like mother did, so many lifetimes ago. And Taylor went, sobbing with a crushing despair that stripped all control away from her. Sabbat pulled and wrapped Taylor in a crushing tight hug and cradled her, whispering the same exact song that mother used to sing to her to comfort her.

"Why did it have to be me?" She whispered into the cradling arms.

The saint kissed her grimy, filthy forehead. "Because you were the only one of us strong enough to bear the burden of mortality."

~~Revelation~~

The light blasted out of the Shrinehold in an ever-expanding sphere. It passed over Gaunt like intense sunlight–warming him to the point of discomfort and pushing against him enough that it took him to his knees. But when it passed, he felt strangely refreshed.

The same could not be said for the monsters that faced them. The traitor marines bowed their heads and began shouting abhorrent prayers to their vile gods, while the massed cult Infardi forces behind them that they seemingly had taken over screamed in agony as if the white light burned them.

Many of the cultists fell where they stood, erupting in flame, while hundreds of their pieces of armor exploded as if before an onslaught of artillery.

Overhead, the scintillating, maddening sky reacted to the ever-growing dome like oil to water. It recoiled from the dome of light, faster even than the light itself, until only untouched, cloudless blue sky remained. Somehow, the explosion ended the Warp Storm that had brought the traitors.

The marine's dark prayers served their purpose, though. When the light passed, many were on fire, but none seemed to care as they straightened and casually patted the flames out. And though an amazing percentage of the cultist forces died, enough remained to still outnumber Gaunt's ragged, undersupplied men.

The traitor marine leader laughed, and just like his words before, the laughter slid impossibly through the winds that roared around the chasm.

"Do you understand now, mortal? It is no mere human you carry amongst you. My blessed Gene-Father has shown me the truth. You carry amongst you a fallen god from the earliest ages of man. You will either give her to us, or you shall die."

Gaunt would be lying to himself if he said he wasn't afraid. He knew his men were. He turned and met Corbec's eyes, then Rawne. "Feth me," Rawne muttered. He then roared, "Prepare to repel!"

Gaunt pulled his ancient power sword, a gift from Vervunhive's nobility, and pointed it at the speaker. "We make no deals with the forsaken and the treasonous."

"Good," the traitor said. "Then we shall grant you the boon of pain! My brothers, kill them…"

Lieutenant Pauk, commanding a venerable old Execution-pattern tank among the Pardus armor, sighted his stubby plasma cannon and fired right into the midst of the traitor marines. The blast should have been sufficient to kill at least half of the eleven monsters. It barely singed one as they exploded into motion far faster than any mortal was capable of. They pulled massive weapons that seemed to snarl with malicious intent and blood thirst.

With the traitor marine's charge, the surviving Infardi forces of the original planetary invasion attacked as well, lobbing artillery and plasma blasts from their remaining armor directly into the emplacements of the Imperials. The cultists, despite being so badly injured from the burst of holy light, surged forward at the direction of their new masters.

Pardus tanks exploded and shattered, killing more of Gaunt's men than direct enemy fire. One blast threw him off his feet entirely as the traitor marines fell savagely on the front lines. Tanith and Vervunhiver soldiers, some hardened veterans of years of war, cried in terror as they were hacked apart with gleeful abandon.

One of the traitors saw Gaunt on the ground, dazed from the death of one of the last Pardus tanks, and stalked toward him with a hungry, demonic smile. The creature's skin was pale like chalk, but splotched with protrusions of bone. The ax he held shimmered as if on fire, though no flame came from it.

"Rejoice, mort…"

Whatever horror he was going to pronounce was interrupted by the arrival of an Infardi armored transport. The tracked vehicle fell as if dropped from the sky. Even the inhuman monster could not survive such crushing, unexpected weight.

Blinking back tears and blood, Gaunt forced himself to his feet. If nothing else, he needed to see what was happening. When he did, he wasn't sure he could believe his own eyes.

Jada Washton, clad in Infardi blue, hung in the air suspended by etheric golden wings. She had both hands lifted above her and held between them actual fire. The traitor marines were desperately trying to kill her–with bolters and demonically possessed weapons, but somehow, she kept them at bay with air and fire alike while striking at them with terrible power.

"Not Jada," Gaunt suddenly realized, as some of the shock of his injuries faded into cold, painful sobriety. He was looking at the holy beati herself. Somehow, Saint Sabbat lived!

He raised his power sword and shouted with every ounce of breath he possessed. "For the Saint! For Saint Sabbat!"

Somehow, enough of his men lived to hear. And they responded by taking up the call. Lasbolts began peppering the demon traitor marines. One of the beasts stumbled back as a double-powered long-las charge took the creature in the face. A tube charge struck seconds later, blowing the beast off his feet entirely. Gaunt rushed forward, heedless of his own safety, and with the stunned, injured beast down he drove his power sword directly through the monster's bulbous, disfigured head.

The sight of one of their own dying at the hands of a mere mortal enraged the traitor marines. But it also distracted them.

Saint Sabbat, whether she bore Jada Washton's face or not, was not just a living saint. She was the leader of an entire crusade that once swept through the whole subsector of hundreds, even thousands of worlds. The moment two of the traitor marines broke off from their engagement with her to punish Gaunt, she struck.

A pillar of fire erupted underneath one of the enemy AT-70s crawling like death up the stony path toward the shrinehold, and just like the first traitor killed, the pillar launched the massive tank into the air to land right in the middle of the remaining seven traitors who were attempting to kill the Beati.

The blow didn't get them all–they were Astartes at one point. But it crushed at least two of them, and broke their formation sufficiently that Sabbat was able to strike at the two running for Gaunt. Lightning lashed down from a now cloudy sky in thick, coruscating branches of superheated plasma.

The blow knocked Gaunt from his feet, but to his shock and horror both traitor marines continued to push toward him even as the thick bolts of continuous lightning cooked their bodies, until finally they perished.

The Saint did not limit her power to just the enemy marines, though. The ragged, already decimated Infardi lines cracked in the face of more pillars of fire that whipped through them with all the ferocity of an artillery barrage. Enemy tanks and transports were flipped by impossible gusts of wind, or by pillars of stone that shot up like hydraulic lifts.

And still she clashed with the Word Bearers, those traitors clasped not just in power armor, but the armor of their dark gods. That armor was not enough. One by one, Sabbat struck down the enemy marines, until the last–the one that spoke–charged her with an insane scream of rage and hate.

Her eyes took on a fell, brilliant blue glow as she rose ever higher into the air, and with a ringing shout she thrust both her hands down. The gesture seemed to harness the elements. Wind, fire and gravity itself coalesced into a column of death that slammed down on the last of the traitors who tried so hard to kill her. The last traitor fought to keep his feet against the impossible display of power. He failed, falling to his knees. His corrupted, demonic flesh began to burst into green flame. His weapons screamed like living creatures before exploding in his hands.

Only then did Gaunt realize that the few remaining cultists were being hunted down by Rawne and the surviving Ghosts.

Into his stunning silence, the real Jada Washton walked out of the Shrinehold. Saint Sabbat sank back to the earth, and as the visible display of her saintly power faded, Gaunt felt as if he were looking at mirror images of the same person.