Legends of the Smoke Jaguars Chapter 243
The diresword came at his face and Vendrick was hard-pressed to deflect it. He managed to get his maul across to block the strike, only for Hythraal to twist the blade about the haft in a rotating motion. Nearly Vendrcik lost his grip on the weapon, feeling the torque nearly tear it from his fingers. Only by going with the momentum could he hold on, dragged sideways and sent into a stumble. An instant later a lash of pain tore over his lumbar, slicing below the backpack. Hythraal had just tried to sever his spinal cord and were Vendrick not a Censor he might have succeeded.
Vendrick stumbled away, seeing the battle raging. Constructs were everywhere, crushing the broken remains of their forebears underfoot without care. The Smoke Jaguars were heavily engaged, and he could not even see Dhulak, so many were they. Still they did not turn to attack him, not while in the sacred communion of the duel. That at least they respected.
"I cast the Thorns of Kurnos!" Hythraal yelled. Vendrick was forced into an awkward leap as the bits of broken crystal tumbled over each other into vine-like shapes. They reached for his boots, trying to trip him and the Censor was forced into a short hop. Barely had his boots touched down when Hythraal attacked again, coming at him with a wide sweep. Vendrick lifted his maul to block and the shock of contact rang through him, only to find a hurtling fist backhanding him across the face. Even helmed the impact brought blood to his mouth and his Censoria crazed, no time to feel it however, for Hythraal was coming again.
Desperately Vendrick fell back, fighting totally defensively, barely keeping alive from one second to the next. The malformed confluence of Astartes and Wraithbone moved with all the speed of the Eldar and all the strength of a Space Marine, the perfect fusion of both. Vendrick could barely keep up, even with his Apothex burning dangerously hot and knew if he remained passive he could only lose.
Throwing caution to the wind he reversed direction, thrusting hard with his maul's head. Hythraal spun on his heel, putting his back to the Censor, throwing his sword into a lethal spin. Somehow Vendrick's free hand caught the incoming elbow and heaved it away, ruining the blow. Then he bashed forward, slamming his chest into the freak's rear. Hythraal jerked forward and now it was Vendrick on the attack. He jabbed his maul for a shoulder and felt his arm ring with the shock of connection, then slammed it into the middle of the back. For once it was Hythraal who suffered a blow and he staggered away, sword low.
Vendrick should follow up with another attack before the Heretical thing could recover, but his strength was ebbing. The Apothex took its toll and he had been using it longer than he ever had before. His arms felt like water and his spine was soft as a reed. His breath was ragged and his hearts quivered in protest of the demands placed on them. Astartes had limits and Vendrick had pushed beyond them long ago, now he paid the price.
"You have some meagre skill," Hythraal allowed as he straightened up and turned to face his foe.
"Frak… you…" Vendrick hissed between gritted teeth.
"So coarse, how your species ever dared to dream to command the stars is a cosmic jest."
"The Imperium lives… while your empire… is dust…"
"To live, that is your species' only goal: surviving one more day. Once we commanded the stars themselves, our merest whim overturned suns. Your pathetic little collection of worlds is nothing compared to the might of the Eldar!"
Vendrick snorted, "We gonna yap all day… or fight…"
Hythraal tensed as he hissed, "I cast…"
Vendrick's bolt pistol was in hand before the conjuration could be finished and he squeezed the trigger on full auto. Chronoflux rounds flew in a torrent, all centred on Hythraal's chest. Surely such a torrent of rounds would end the filth, the temporal effect tearing the armour to shreds but it was not to be. Hythraal seemed to blur as he dove aside, moving at hyperfast velocity. Even in the Censoria he was greased lightning and the flurry of rounds flew past, striking random constructs behind and tearing them to shreds. Vendrick's bolt pistol clunked empty and before he could reach for his last magazine he was under assault again.
Hythraal twirled his diresword overhead, a move that anyone else would consider sloppy but he turned into an elegant slash for the head. Vendrick blocked again, his arm ringing with the impact as Hythraal turned the rebuffed blow into a slice for the midriff. Another lash of pain writ over Vendrick's ribs, drawing a gasp of agony, then a stab to the shoulder, drawing blood. Diceramite seemed useless against that infernal sword and he was forced to backpedal lest he be run through. Something hit his back, a piece of construct, legs and abdomen left standing upright, he spun around it and kicked it hard, sending it flying at Hythraal, only to see it halted in midair by a casual expenditure of psychic power.
"Pathetic," Hythraal sneered, "The one who wore this body was far greater."
"I'll still beat… you…" Vendrick gasped, one hand pressed to his belly.
"Try to die with some dignity at least."
"I'll die as I was born… kicking and screaming…"
"Then we are in agreement: you die here!"
Hythraal attacked in a rush. His arm flickered and what was a wide sweep inverted and became a curving stroke. Vendrick's maul was caught by the haft and knocked from his grip, sent skidding to the floor. A moment before death came upon that glittering edge and Vendrick could only barrel forward, trying to grapple with the fiend. Hythraal rebuffed him easily, knocking him down. Yet Vendrick's hands caught the Wraithbone shard sticking out of the helm and dragged him down too. They fell to the floor in a scrum, smashing with knees and elbows, trying to batter each other into submission.
"Filthy Mon-Keigh!" Hythraal screamed.
"Relentless!" Vendrick bellowed, "Relentless!"
"Get off me you disgusting animal!"
Hythraal bucked wild and sent Vendrick skidding away. The Censor slid through broken parts of constructs, bits pinging off his back. By sheer chance he cracked his spine on the edge of a shattered automaton and his maul rolled in front of his eyes. He grabbed it on sheer instinct as he came to a halt, gasping for air as his chest burned like a bonfire. He tried to rise, but his strength was spent, he wanted to roar some defiant cry but his breath was hoarse. The Apothex had claimed its due, he was done. All he could do was lay there and pant, staring at the floor helplessly.
Hythraal's boots closed and he wiped some grit off his chest as he hissed, "No living thing deserves death as much as you do."
"I spit… upon…"
"Save the barking defiance, it will not save you."
"Wasn't meant to…"
"Your death will be pathetic, as was your life. I will kill you with one stroke and then leave your corpse to be forgotten forever. Your life amounted to nothing!"
"At least I am alive… and while I am… I can do this!"
Vendrick summoned all of his strength for one last blow, swinging his maul up and over. Hythraal sneered as he effortlessly dodged the blow, but it wasn't intended to land anyway. Vendrick didn't aim for the freak but instead a tiny glint of grey on the floor, right in his eyeline, where he had dropped it. Falling from his belt in the scrum, his last magazine of Chronoflux rounds and he brought the maul's head down upon it with a peal of doom.
Reality screamed as the heavy head made contact, shattering all thirty rounds at once. Instantly a searing confluence of entropic energies blasted upwards, slicing space and time into a million different strands. The maul's head shattered, torn into atoms, leaving Vendrick clutching a shorn haft that first dissolved into rust, then crumbled into dust, and then random atoms. He pressed himself flat as temporal flux blasted outwards and up, rebounding off the Webway's structure to fill the air above his head. Raw time made putty of the laws of reality, rendering everything into crazed patterns of youth and age, catching Hythraal in its temporal razorblades.
The Champion screamed as his form was torn to shreds. Diced into microscopic splinters and then diced again. Millions of years fell upon his atoms, scattering them to the winds even the surging vitality of youth wove them back together. Two blind gods of creation and destruction wove his form and tore it asunder simultaneously, making and unmaking the armour and wraithbone form in a crazed loop without end. Nothing living could survive that, nothing, and yet this foe was not living. Hythraal was a ghost, and time is nothing to a ghost.
"Ha!" Hythraal's voice echoed, "You think this can stop me! That body was only a husk, nothing more. I cannot die twice and this is not the first time I've lost a body!" The spirit of Hythraal rose above the clashing temporal folds and reached out. Broken construct parts responded, spilling over themselves as they came together by his command. Pieces of jagged forms flew to him, conjoining and reforming at his whim. Hythraal shaped them into a barrel chest broad as a man is tall, two legs higher than a Dreadnought and arms long as trees. A smooth head rose from the mess of jagged parts, fusing perfectly without seam or join. A sword of crystal was forged from wreckage, flawless in all ways once made and the other arm bore a shield with a shining mirror sheen. Hythraal's body had been destroyed, but he made a new one, greater by far. As the vehicles of Calan Gaeav were to the Vypers and Jetbikes of later ages so this body was to the greatest war machines of the Craftworlds. Towering over all, powerful beyond reckoning and piloted by one who was both dead and alive: a Proto-Wraithknight.
Vendrick gasped in horror as he lay helpless. His strength was spent, his muscles wasted. He could not fight this, even at his peak he would have been outmatched. Nothing he had left could scratch that hide, he could not evade a single blow. Hythraal would end him with a single step, squishing him into paste without resistance. It was all over, the mission had failed, Vendrick had failed, but in that he was wrong.
A bellowing roar of unholy anger rang loud, washing over them both. Hythraal paused, smooth head turning towards a brilliant flare of red and yellow light. The Wraithknight form tensed as he prepared to greet another foe, but he could not possibly have been prepared for this. In a corona of burning flames the Legionnaire of the Damned attacked, charging headlong at the greatest foe in sight. Warhammer raised high, burning chains swaying with every step and with a roar of heated ire scorching the air itself the unholy did race to embrace the dead in a clash of arms outside of reality, a sight unseen by men since the Horus Heresy, and so the battle was truly joined.