If Ouranos was even a fraction as intimidated by the appearance of the Grey Knights as Cronos was, the heretic-savant did not show it. The assaults against us continued, albeit with heightened daemonic frequency, meeting Mezentius’s squad head-on. For a time, I believed Mezentius and his brothers invincible.
And then the first of them fell.
To say that there was a morale shock to see an Angel of their caliber bleed and die would have been an understatement. Though in truth, we did not see their death; what had unfolded was far more sinister. Along our journey, and not unlike as transpired aboard The Atticus, a wall materialized into existence where previously it had not been, and in the process collapsed upon the right arm of one of Mezentius’s brothers. The arm was lost immediately, and with a spray of quickly-coagulated blood, but as the Grey Knight recoiled from his disarmament, another wall appeared out of the ether, and sectioned him off from us altogether. His left arm was all that remained with us, his body hidden from view behind a menacing wall-grin not unlike that which had haunted Mirena. So yes, we did not get to see the Grey Knight die, but no amount of faith or zealotry could overcome the chilling understanding that Ouranos could make an armless heir of the Emperor his plaything, psychic or not.
We were assaulted by daemons that might be better described as ghosts than monsters shortly thereafter, in the midst of the morale hit. Psychic apparitions, perhaps, but humanoid in form, rather than the inhuman beasts that had been cropping up otherwise; and these ghosts used armaments akin to those of the Lost and the Damned, wielding corrupted weapons once belonging to the Imperial Guard. It was a tossup as to whether a Bolt, despite its consecrations, could hit and ‘kill’—better, perhaps, to say ‘banish’—one of these ghosts, as often they popped out of view when one took aim at them to reappear a short distance to the side. But Holy Bolterfire, if it connected, did seem to banish this ghastly foe with reasonable success; the psykana of the remaining Grey Knights proved much more effective, though I was intimately familiar with their need to conserve their resources in that regard.
Over time, as ammunition and calm dwindled, losses mounted. The attrition of our siege of The Finality was slow at first, but the loss of one of the Grey Knights seemed to shatter any hope for survival, and that cascaded into a self-fulfilling actuality. Two of our three remaining armored vehicles, at the time, succumbed to the ghostly assault, and the last fell to another attack from Genestealer hordes. By the time we had repelled our second encounter with Genestealers, two more Red Hunters fell, leaving us with two remaining, and one Grey Knight was wounded. Our infantry, likewise, fell to three Techpriests—Varnus included—four Sisters—Lucene included—and six Scions—Silas included.
I had had the time to ‘save’ perilously few.
And then the ship turned against us further. While it did not lop limbs off from anyone else, it did begin to cordon off stragglers from the main group, surely killing them in isolation. I of course did not believe this ship operated of its own accord, and that instead this tactical butchery was Ouranos’s doing. Oddly enough, though I quickly deduced why, as more and more of my allies were separated from me, the illumination of the vessel improved. One would have thought, at first, that darkness would creep in, but I soon understood that the darkness intended for me was not the visual sort. Ouranos wanted to ensure I would see the last of my allies be picked off. Dimly lit halls were far less destructive in that regard than plain view would have accomplished.
To that end, the remaining Grey Knights, Mezentius included, were the first to be cordoned off from our group—a quick and admittedly capable response from our enemy in handling the larger threat. I took solace, however, in the fact that separated from us or not, they would not be so easily felled. But once gone, Cronos began to ‘speak’ up again, indeed confirming—if not directly—that it was afraid of Mezentius and his Brothers. Let me help, Blackgar. I can save what’s left.
Save what’s left for yourself, you mean? I thought in reply.
Bah! Details, it chided, a hint of playfulness in its voice, as though my accusation was not its original intent but it decided to go along with my claim regardless. It nevertheless took another break from me after I had denied its aid once more. I knew that would only be temporary.
***
I am in the mortar-peppered fields outside Abseradon. A haze clouds my mind, albeit not from any malevolent specter; no, this murkiness comes from within, as indecisiveness bubbles up from the depths of shellshock. At first, I am in cover alone, and then Lucene joins me by my side, providing suppressive fire to lessen the onslaught heading our way in the immediate.
I am in the catacombs under Aerialon, in their vast darkness. Some distance ahead of me, Silas shouts a command to target an enemy outside my vision. Bolterfire races overhead, matched by lasfire in the opposite direction. A lasrifle catches Silas in the side of his neck, silencing him at once, and sending one final Bolt wide. It sails across the battlefield and strikes a mainline gas pipe.
Fire erupts.
I am on Amnes Minoris. The steamlike hiss of a gaseous explosion pierces through my ears. Shrapnel flies out from the walls, as though the world is punched apart from within. A blunt shard catches Varnus across his face. A slender but razorlike fragment pierces into Bliss’s gut. Both fall onto their backs, knocked away from the explosion. Lucene shields me from it, her power armor peppered by debris at her back.
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I am aboard the shattered deck of the Coldbreed. I am surrounded by the dead and dying and enemies abound. Our final Angels, the Red Hunters, laid motionless some meters past, slain to the man. This is my inevitable fate—to lead a charge into self-destructive melee combat and slay the 8th to the man, or to be too weak to act and watch as the 9th bleeds out in front of me. Had we all the time in the world, I might sit and wonder if I was a fool to think the pleasantries of life might continue ad infinitum—the fun, the play, the romance, the brotherhood. There is not any of that in the end. There is just death. And death is never so pretty. But there was not all the time in the world to think about that. In another second or two, our enemies would encroach upon us all, and finish off whoever remained, and—
Lucene moved to my right, not terribly injured by the explosion, if at all. My gaze met hers, and expressionless though our helmets were, and without reading her mind, I knew what she was thinking. She knew, as I did, that we two were the only ones that would be allowed to survive this battle. That Ouranos was saving her for last, to best twist the knife deep. That this was always our enemies’ plan.
“Ouranos,” I muttered, barely more than a whisper—so quietly, Lucene may not have heard me. “Let me spare them.”
+Be quick about it. No tricks,+ came the reply, and a murky black and white oval portal began to materialize between our fallen allies, in some moments like a soupy liquid, at others like wisps of smoke. I knew what I had to do to get my friends out of this hell. And Lucene knew, too, and knew that the charge of my safety would remain with her, as I would be unable to protect myself, that my thoughts were no longer going to remain constrained within my own flesh and blood.
I had never wared a Techpriest before. I knew Varnus’s mind to be cold and calculative, as I had sensed of it in our travels together, but upon stepping into his thoughts then, I found it the deathly sort of cold and empty. He was not dead, not yet, but it would take more than the cybernetics on his body to return him to life. This, however, made him the perfect target for waring, as though reanimating a corpse. Never mind the fact that I needed his mechadendrites. Thankfully, controlling them through Varnus’s mind came naturally to me; perhaps it was because I had ample experience controlling my own augmetic, or because I had witnessed the control of a Knight through Galen’s eyes, or because I had once seen all there was to see inside the mind of the long-dead Heretek Holicar Espirov. Whatever the source of my ability to use Varnus’s augmetics, I could.
The Techpriest rose to his feet, aided by the appendages grafted into his spine, with green light shining from one cracked glass eye, and blue lightning sizzling out of the other. Moving Varnus about was a simple task. Plucking Silas off the ground was simple too, as my brother-like Scion was unconscious. A single mechadendrite sufficed to lift him into the air and hold him safely. But Bliss…
Bliss was still conscious, clutching at the borders of a bloody wound with a piece of shrapnel emerging from her gut. Varnus moved over her and assessed her status. The Techpriest’s diagnostic apparatus informed him of the proper course of action to maximize biological preservation while short on proper medicae equipment. One mechadendrite gripped the shrapnel at just the right angle, and pulled it cleanly from Bliss’s wound. As Bliss screamed in pain, another mechadendrite sprayed disinfectant over the gash in her belly, then clamped down over the wound entirely. Its palm then sutured her flesh up as best it could before finally releasing Bliss to her own devices. That was short-lived, however, before one final appendage grabbed hold of one of Bliss’s ankles and hoisted her into the air.
“Wha—Varnus! Put me down!” Bliss protested, and then she saw his eyes, and fear swelled over her face. “Don’t you dare,” she hissed, glancing around the room, and seeing Lucene standing over my slumped form while enemies all around us stood patiently, watching, waiting. Abdominal wound or not, Bliss tucked herself head over heel and ripped apart the mechadendrite holding her leg, letting her fall back to the ground.
Bliss shot toward me quick as she could, but a psychic blast pulsed out from my body, knocking even my genetically-enhanced Assassinorum Agent back. In the meantime, Varnus tossed Silas’s body through the portal Ouranos had conjured before turning back for Bliss. As she landed, two more mechadendrites clutched at her legs, tripping her up before she could run toward me again. So she dug her fingers into the steel at her front, clawing at the hull between us. “Callant, you asshole, stop this! Lucene, stop him!” she plead.
“Goodbye, Bliss Carmichael,” Lucene answered with a shake of her head. “Thank you for all you’ve done for us. For him.” Not getting anywhere with pulling against the strength of her fingers laterally, Varnus’s mechanical appendages again chose to lift her vertically, pulling her into the air and her hands out from the ground.
“No!” Bliss shrieked as she sailed into the air, arms swinging wildly to grasp at anything, fighting to stay with us. But there was nothing to hold on to. “Calla—” she howled, but never finished saying my name before Varnus at last threw her through the portal. His exit, finally, was far less eventful, as I walked my dear friend out of hell.
The moment Varnus vanished, and the portal closed, all the foes surrounding us faded away. I was certain we would see them again, and very soon at that, but Ouranos saw fit to give Lucene and I one final reprieve. When I opened my eyes again, Lucene thanked me. “What for?” I grunted, gingerly standing to my feet. She aided me in that endeavor, as she aided me in all things.
“For not trying to save me,” she answered.
“Neither you or Ouranos would have allowed that,” I said, to which she nodded.
“All the same, a lesser man would have tried. But not you,” Lucene acknowledged, then shaking her head. “How’s your ammunition situation?”
“I have…a few shots left. Then it falls to swordplay,” I replied.
“Likewise. And thankfully, we’re both good at that.” With one hand, she raised her Boltrifle to her right side, and extended her left hand palm-up toward me. “It is good to die for the Emperor. Equally so to die by your side. Shall we go, then?”
“It would have been good to live by your side, and for the Emperor, too,” I admitted.
“Cal, we have done that already. Living. Perhaps it is time we try the other thing.”
After one long, deep breath, I nodded in agreement, and took her hand in mine while looking off into the empty darkness ahead. “Yes, let us go, then, for the Emperor. And let us bring a thousand of His enemies with us.”
“Each.”