Legends of the Smoke Jaguars Chapter 242
Into the golden light they came, a rush of enemies, already firing. Vitcos dove aside as Shuriken rounds flew by the hundred, flying for the Smoke Jaguars. His bolt pistol was in hand before he hit the ground, firing fat rounds at the incoming mob of ghosts. Their forms shimmered eerily in the non-space of the Webway, as if having trouble staying coherent. There was nothing wrong with their constructs though, and they came storming in hard and fast.
"Their numbers are beyond counting!" Ilquitio roared as his bolter fired.
Vitcos hit the ground and rolled behind a broken pile of bits for cover, "Fix the eye, flank the wing!"
"Easy for the tongue to say," Sechura snarled as he hunkered down, "Harder for feet to obey!"
"Athra, take your feet right! Athra... where is he gone?!"
"He fled in the blinking of the eye."
"Wring his neck later, fight now!" Tachna snarled.
"How does a king fight the incoming tide?!"
"As the lion pouncing!" Tachna bellowed.
The Headsman strode forward, his fist crackling and axe humming subsonically. His face was anger and his eyes steady. Lacking time to don his helm he marched to meet them bare-faced but was not undone. Into the oncoming horde he strode, his weapons sweeping wide. A single blow to a chest shattered a ghost into a shower of parts, a swipe from his axe cleaved another in two. As the automatons fell the ghosts riding them drifted free, wailing thinly, their shapes becoming vague as they dissipated, not extinct for sure but drawn back to Calan Gaeav where they would awaken again with the rising of the sun. Still the rest closed in, dropping rifles to draw swords and short spears that harried him constantly. Tachna met them with tenacious strength letting their blows slide off his thick plate, attacking, attacking always attacking.
"Forward Kinsmen else be deed-titled Craven Shadow Prowl!" Tachna roared.
"No man calls me coward!" Vitcos snarled.
"Then fight for once in your ill-starred life!"
"My hate for Il-Tzak knows no bounds!"
"You have yet to prove me wrong!"
The Gaze Catcher's words lit a fire in Vitcos' breast and he rose to his feet, Chakrams in hand. The foes were everywhere, closing rapidly, intent on his ending. He saw the ghosts' anger on translucent faces, their outrage plain but his was the greater fury. He leapt into the fight, his mouth wide in a feral roar and brought both circlets down on the head of a foe. A moment of resistance as the weapons found the perfect frequency, then he cleaved through. One foe fell into pieces as the ghost dissipated back to its eternal prison but many more came at him. Vitcos lashed out left and right, tearing limbs free, then brought his arms back in a scissoring motion, carving another apart. More he laid low, more, moving with all his speed but his enemies were too many.
A spear slashed over his cheek, drawing blood in a spray of red. A sword cut his arm, leaving his Ceramite sundered. A stab to the knee made him fall to a crouch and a cut to the wrist nearly saw him lose his Chakram. Ancient warcries pounded his ears, the suggestion of brightly attired dead filled his eyes. Ethereal noises assailed his hearing, the arms and legs of ghosts long dead were all he could see. Surely such numbers must spell his doom yet he was not alone.
Blazing Shadow Prowl tore into the closing foes, Obsidian Blades making grim tallies of the slain. Chests were pierced, limbs hacked off and backs stabbed, sending the ghostly dead back from where they came. Sechura grappled one from behind, working his knife into the join of shoulder and neck. He heaved hard and lifted it off his feet, driving the point straight through. A heave of the arm and the head came clean off, leaving the body to slump in defeat as the ghost fled. Ilquitio was faster, his Daga blades stabbing deep then exploding outwards as the tines sprang open. Great craters he blew into each foe and his arms were swift as a striking serpents, stabbing and hacking ceaselessly.
Vitcos saw it all but he was distracted by another. Not too far away Vendrick was confronted by Hythraal. The First of Censors stood proud, ignored by the streaming ghosts who parted around his form like a river around a rock. The twisted amalgam that was Hythraal saluted with a raised sword before the eyes, then sprang into action, leaping forward with his sword leading the way. Vendrick managed to avoid instant death by the tiniest of margins but then the attacking ghosts closed ranks and Vitcos saw no more.
Enraged the First rose to his feet, tearing upwards with his Chakrams to carve the belly out of a construct. He slammed shoulder to shoulder with his Kinsmen, hacking and slashing with all his ardour. It made no difference, the ghosts kept coming, hungry for the killing blow. The Smoke Jaguars were soon surrounded, forming a circle to guard each other's backs. Such a battle was anathema to the Testimony, to be pinned down was the worst way to fight, but so many were the dead that no other recourse could be chosen.
"The dripping waters wear down a mountain!" Ilquitio called as he stabbed a ghost.
"To die in glory is no fear to me!" Sechura snarled as he struck an arm off an attacker.
"Dying in his forgotten land is no tale worth telling," Vitcos hissed as he removed a head from its neck.
"The sun is low on the horizon!" Sechura refuted.
"Then we race twilight!"
Vitcos redoubled his efforts, putting all his anger into his blows. He fought one moment to the next without thought of the second beyond that. All his anger, every morsel of bitter rage he had known he called forth. His abandonment by his father, the endless scorn of Tachna from his first day as a Doan, the murder of his blood-brother and the taste of kin-flesh between his teeth. Aapo the Eldest, lost in battle, a wound that would never heal. His discovery of twin heritages, and the lies that had been spun to conceal it. Vitcos called upon it all to stoke the fires of anger and he fought and fought and fought.
It wasn't enough, the ghosts just kept coming. Blazing Shadow were being crushed, their ending inevitable. No matter how many they slew the tide just kept coming. For all his flaming soul Vitcos' rage wasn't great enough, and yet there was another. It came to him in a flash, there was a greater wroth to call upon, a fire that made his own seem a candle in the night. A towering rage that could break armies, all he had to do was unleash it.
We cannot stand before the avalanche!" Ilquitio yelled.
"Bludgeon me a path!"
"You have a plan?!"
"Inspiration dawns!" Vitcos yells.
"Brilliant and cunning or just desperate?!" Sechura snarled.
"The difference will be measured in success! As one, strike!"
Blazing Shadow surged outwards, throwing back the ghosts for a single instant. Vitcos broke free and ran as Blazing Shadow Prowl closed together, forming a circle as more constructs closed in. The First bounded away, searching for a flash of blue. He beheld Vendrick brawling with Hythraal, both moving so fast even Transhuman eyes could barely follow. Dhulak was walking backwards, expending the last of his rounds in a desperate attempt to buy time. Of Athra J'rect there was nothing to be seen, the devious slime vanishing into the ether. Vitcos put it all from his mind as he spied a mote of blue and bounded for it, yearning for salvation, only to be denied. From nowhere Tachna appeared, blocking the way, his face bloodied and furious.
"Make way!" Vitcos called as he screeched to a halt just shy of the stasis-trap.
"What madness is this?!" Tachna yelled.
"Time slips through our hands; the debate is moot!"
"You seek to unleash catastrophe!"
"Catastrophe is upon us, whether you will it or not!" Vitcos snarled.
"You would free it, you would abandon our hunt!"
Vitcos could not help but laugh at his intransigence, "A hunt, you care about a hunt now?! All is madness and woe; the hunt has failed!"
"Nothing has failed, the Shade-Lord trothed us to Lazar and we obey!"
"A pebble weighs more with me than Teotihuacan's decree!"
Tachna snarled, "Only you would utter such cowardly words. Your heart is frail, your spirit unworthy. From your own lips you are condemned, Last among Firsts!"
A flash of grey and silver in the air and Vitcos blinked in surprise. Something had changed, something stupendous. It took a moment to penetrate his mind that his arm was extended out to the side, having moved faster than thought itself. His Chakram shivered , vibrating bloody molecules clear of the metal. A sick feeling in his gullet, a sense of denial but reality was upon him. Vitcos knew what was to come.
Tachna stood before him, eyes wide and jaw hanging low. His face was pale but the top of his head hung loose. Slowly his scalp slid to the right, moving separately from his temples. A chunk of brain went with it, trepanning him utterly as blood leaked down the sides of his head. Shock ran through Vitcos at the sight, he hadn't meant to strike, his arm moved on its own accord. Lies, he knew it was lies, the blow was instinctive but he'd long dreamt of it, he'd pictured this moment so many times. Tachna hated him, he hated Tachna, always they had been on the road to this destination. Vitcos' could not claim this was a crime of passion, or heated by blinding anger, this was murder most foul.
Tachna's body slowly toppled backwards, falling to the floor with a bang. It wasn't just the impact; his bulk had crushed a small device upon the floor. Instantly the stasis-field vanished, realising the Damned Legionary. A bellow so fierce heat scorched Vitcos' eyebrows, knocking him to his rear. It saved his life as the giant leapt past, flaming Warhammer already sweeping wide. Automatons exploded into tinkling dust as it attacked, fury and wrath incarnate. Vitcos however did not watch, eyes fixed on Tachna's corpse. Vitcos had killed him, killed a fellow Smoke Jaguar, a Headsman no less. The Laws of Sedaxus were plain on the punishment due: Vitcos' life was forfeit. The First sat in dumb horror and could only whisper, "By my own hand I am damned."