The Cleansing of Nordyc
The Battle of the Red Frost
Dawn broke, bringing no solace. Despite knowing what lay ahead, few had slept restfully that night. Ceaseless storms and gruesome terrors had worn away at all but the most inhumanly steely nerves, but even they had been eclipsed by a new feeling. It was an old thing, deeper than fear or yearning, which since the dawn of time had stirred in the bones of mankind; the anxious expectation of those who know that only little separates them from what they desire. Just one more day, one final trial. Then, for many of those who now strode into their ranks on the snow-hardened ground, the gruelling months of campaign through the frost-scarred roof of the world would be over, at least for a time. Those who had homes would see them again. Even their genewrought fellows, those who had nowhere to return but another battlefield, would see what they most dearly desired by the day’s end if they lived until it - victory, the fall of their hated foe and the triumph of the gold-mantled saviour of Terra.
Only one thing stood between them and that end now. The rotten heart of Maulland Sen.
The citadel was nested in a high mountain cleft, sprawling its dark walls and towers onto the slopes beside it like a great beast rearing to pounce. Long weeks of strenuous combat had bought the Imperials access to the final holdfast of the Confederacy, but if any had expected that the wellspring of corruption would be easily taken once the outer rings of fortified cities had fallen, their hopes had been dashed as soon as they marched into view of the ominous stronghold. Great stone walls interlocked around its girth in a deadly defensive ring, dotted with sentry towers and ancient cannon emplacements like the spines of some nightmarish serpent. The slopes of the bastions cut strange shapes in the icy murk, and it was unwise to gaze at them for long, for soon it seemed to the eye that they slithered and flowed into impossible angles that roused a droning pain in the head. A venomous green glow poured unceasingly skywards from the unseen heart of the fortress, refracting from the overhanging glaciers and filling the night with flitting shadows.
It was here that the Priest-King had unearthed the profane technologies that empowered his armies, and here he had sworn the tribes of Nordyc to the worship of his rapacious gods. No place was better fit to be the grave of his reign, but it was clear he would not go easily into the oblivion that awaited his ilk of warlocks and prophets.
Yet even in the face of all his might, the warriors of the Imperium were undaunted. The great host that had set forth into the northern wastes was much diminished now, chipped away by the dark arts of the tribes and the cold fury of the land itself, bled by a hundred battles and sparsely reinforced so far in the enemy’s heartlands. Only the strongest and most determined had endured all that the north had arrayed against them, and now they stood, thin but firm and grim-faced, mustered at the foot of the forbidding mountains. All of them had lost friends, comrades, brothers in this deadly march; it was not only the abhorrence for the horrors they had seen that drove them on, not the restless eagerness to cast down the last obstacle and return home, nor even the presence of their Emperor, seldom seen but felt by all. Vengeance against the dark lords of the north warmed the hearts of nigh every man and woman with a bitter flame.
Though the Imperial lines were a hardened shadow of their former magnitude, they were a tremendous sight nonetheless, long files resplendent under the pale sun in their helmets and armaments. Battle-scarred tanks and hungrily awning artillery guns reinforced their backbone, turned up towards their ultimate prey. At the fore of the formations, ten thousand Thunder Warriors faced the pestilent light of the fortress with impatient defiance, uncaring of the mesmeric traps the infernal construction laid for their eyes.
Behind those unstable warriors were the proud Sentinels, arrayed in small dedicated units - about five or six squads for each of the mortal bands. After fighting the horrid monsters of the north many of their armors bore the scars of conquest and many took trophies of their victories, though none so macabre or imposing as their cousins. Their forces were arrayed to protect the men that had brought them this far and to destroy the horrors too strange or evil for human eyes. They were a boon and many of the soldiers near them knew that they had the Emperor’s finest looking after them, even if they knew not all would see the siege through.
The one-thousand Sentinels would leave this place as undaunted as they had arrived - but not unchanged.
In the wings of its files, the Imperial army had undergone a strange inversion. Where at the outset of the campaign the Legio Cataegis had encased the flanks like a great cuirass of steel, the hulking genewarriors had gathered to the centre of the van, and though the Sentinels retained their own place, their brothers in the Astartes had been the ones to disperse outwards. The slate-armoured Ninth Legion hovered around the sides of the battle-order, embuscaded among the uncleared rocks and crags of the mountainside. While they had whetted their taste for raids and ambushes over frontal combat, their preference was just as much a matter of necessity. Their numbers were thin, eaten away by more than battle alone, and strangely irregular in places - some of the warriors seemed to stand strangely tall at a distance, perhaps as much so as even the Steel Lords, and shuffled in place, while others crouched close to the ground in a low stoop though they were far yet from the enemy.
These oddities were only visible to a sharp eye, however, for the unevenness of the self-styled Reviled was far more apparent in their armament. Each cohort had its distinct panoply of macabre spoils of glory, heralding its grim kenning as a fraternity of warriors as well as a military unit. There stood the Skulltakers with their polished stark-white masks; there the Blood Mark, each with a red handprint on his chest or shoulder; the Excoriators with their grisly standards and the pale-encrusted Bone Walkers; and the Lords of Ash, whose armour was scored with the cinders of fallen cities, the Harrowers bristling with bonded spikes, and many others.
It was at the very forefront of the assembled host that its commanders met to divide their last dispositions. The Primarch Ushotan, the highest-ranking among them and the one who led the mightiest part of the army, had willed it so, perhaps to flaunt his courage in stepping forth in the open and challenging the foe even before the battle was joined. Indeed, just as likely his men had expected nothing less of him.
“We will be first,” were the greeting words from the gnarled lips of that mountain of muscle and belligerence, no less imposing now for standing on the slopes of a massive of rock. On the bare rocky ground, with nothing behind him but the citadel and its baleful glow, the giant in brutally simple grey armour loomed perhaps even larger, undiminished by all his years of warfare. His voice was as peremptory as an avalanche. “Only we here have the force to push the tip forward. The rest of you cover us as you can, just don’t get in the way.”
The delegation of army officers, dwarfed into near-insignificance by his presence even off at a wary distance, did but acquiesce with their silence.
“So long as you control the warrior’s murder-lust,” came the stoic voice of Arturas, his voice modulated by the great helm that came to mark the Astartes. Arturas had no qualms with the now obsolete Thunder Warriors - he admired them for their continued service. However, he always despised the degradation that took them and the eventual monsters that they became. The Sentinels were the shields of Humanity and would strive to save the people from monsters of any form. His voice became sharper, “Additionally, Primarch, I request that Steel Sentinels be tasked with pushing for the sorcerer-king. Our number is few but we can prove effective in decapitating the enemy leadership, this could make the conflict swift.”
“If swiftness is still a thing of this world inside that den of witches,” Skorr mused. Unlike the rest of his warriors, the Master of the Ninth was not adorned with grisly trophies or warpaint. Only the golden feather shone undimmed above his brow. His entourage was not so pristine - Nyrid donned an oversized mutant skull as a visor, after the fashion of his chosen swordsmen, and a cybernetic arm betrayed Ghaal’s incipient deterioration. Still, the Master’s voice was as congenial as ever. “Yet if any of us can hope to pierce through its defences, it is a compact speartip such as that of our brothers.”
Ushotan grunted, making no effort to conceal his disdain. He never had made a secret of his hostility towards what seemed to him painfully inadequate successors to his Thunder Legion.
“Don’t think you can end this with a clean strike,” he pointed at the sinister citadel with the tip of his sword, “The savages are bringing everything they have left to bear against us, and if we don’t do the same they will dance on our bones. The Thunder will be unleashed - there is nothing in there left to spare. If you can push through when we reach the gates, the king will be yours, but no more than that.”
Arturas bristled at such words, knowing that there was a chance that civilians still roamed the citadel and were merely hiding from unknowing liberation. He was going to speak against Ushotan, before a shadow momentarily moved over him, silencing his tongue for the briefest of moments. The Master of the Steel Sentinels gazed up and he saw what seemed to be a black hawk far above them - certainly higher than any Hawk ought to be flying. It was an auspicious sign, however, and Arturas spoke to the others with confidence, “The Emperor is with us. May His will be done! Victory is ours!”
A war cry ran up the the Sentinels who stood behind their master, the only time they seemed to ever break their rigid and silent discipline as the Astartes all cast their gaze to the black hawk that circled them. Other shouts came from further afield as the others quickly boxed the sign, the Astartes would bring death with the Emperor’s Own at their head. Not even Ushotan would be able to deny that the appearance of the Hawk spelled certain victory for the Imperial forces, though Arturas moved his gaze to the Primarch of the Thunder Warrior legion.
The Steel Lord’s eye had followed his skyward, catching the same remote swooping shadow, and his response had been a different one indeed. He scowled and grit his teeth in a feral grimace, then looked to the mountain again with a defiant growl which might have been directed at anyone and not just the enemy. The presence of the Talon leader could have meant any number of things to him. An omen of victory, to be sure, but also a sign of mistrust. That he could not be relied on to conquer this last obstacle without the Custodians at his back; or, worse yet, that a blade had to be hung over his head, waiting to fall should he be judged dangerous for the very lord whom he served. These suspicions sat ill with the violent and prideful spirit of a Thunder Warrior - and besides, Ushotan had little fondness for Custodes, so cold and stunted in the passions that made life worth living, though he did respect their prowess more than that of his fellow gene-warriors. Therefore he did not answer Arturas, but brandished his sword with a wordless cry that was echoed by his legion in a storm of ferocity. The steel-shod giants moved forward, and the battle began.
As eager as the Steel Lords were to plunge into the heart of the foe and perhaps dispel the foreboding of the shadow that hovered over them, even they knew enough to ration their strength. The slope that led up to the citadel was a steep and tall one, and an eager rush would have left the assailants fatigued once they reached the top, ready only as fodder for the blades of Maulland Sen. Thus the Thunder Legion bit its bridle and restrained its fiery blood, and marched onwards in uneven but quite orderly lines, irritatedly conscious of its vulnerability but powerless for now to act on it. In the rear followed the rest of the army, the growling bulks of the tanks and unhurried rows of infantry streaming behind them. As grandiose as the sight was, the decisive moment of the battle was already almost upon them. Now that the force was most open to attack, it depended on their grit and tenacity to climb to the gates so high up with their strength and will to fight undamped.
The ordeal did not let itself be long awaited. The ancient guns at the top of the bastions spun, slowly, almost lazily, and with a peal of thunder opened fire. Flame and incandescent metal rained in the path of the advancing army, gouging craters into millenarian rock and scattering bodies, whether they were human or more, like heaps of mangled and blackened dolls. Some vehicles groaned and fell still, dead and smouldering husks of melted steel. Then the viridian light blazed brighter all of a sudden, eclipsing the pale sun with its corrosive glare, and the air overhead began to swirl like disturbed water, stretching and spinning shadows cast by no body upon no surface. Out of ephemeral, bursting and collapsing spectral whirlpools, strikes of many-coloured lightning barraged the ascent, twisting as if with malign will to reap the greatest number of victims. Where they struck, sometimes iridescent fire blazed in columns, dissolving flesh and bone in its tongues; sometimes men and machines burst into crystalline fragments like smashed sculptures of glass; sometimes bodies swelled horribly, bristling with misplaced teeth and eyes, and weapons began to breathe in the hands of their wielders, requiring those who marched nearby to promptly cut down these nascent horrors with grim decision.
These were the harshest moments, when the fortress could rain down death from the advantage of its height while the Imperials’ own artillery was not yet in position to contest it. Hundreds, thousands fell in these first bloody minutes, unnoticed by their comrades who trampled the tortured bodies in their unrelenting march. The only way for the groans and screams of the dead to be repaid now was for the army to reach its objective and visit them on the Nordyc many times over.
At last the ponderous wheeled guns and tracked missile-pods in the rearguard crawled up the foot of the mountain and clung to its jagged and blasted stones. Slow, graceless targets that they were, had they attempted to scale the way first they would have been wiped out in a breath, but with the defenders’ fire focused on the vanguard, they had time to aim their mouths and sensors with unhurried precision. The bellowing of the bastion guns and the howl of the unnatural tempest were for an instant overcome by the concordant, synchronised roar of the siege artillery. When the embattled attackers next looked up at the citadel, several of the emplacements on its walls were smoking. The bombardment from above was diminished, though not fully staunched. The aberrant lightning had ceased, though the fiendish light and ominous ripples in the air remained.
The augmented of the new 19th Legion had waited for this opening - much like the Thunder Warriors before them. They surged forwards pressing their advantage with inhuman bounds across the open ground now that the emplacements had been momentarily silenced by the artillery. Many of them carried melta charges, primed and ready to disrupt further emplacements once they had gotten to them. Yet, the strength of land between them and the citadel was vast enough and still a perfect killing ground for whoever survived the bombardment. The Sentinels of Steel made ready for a hard fought battle, prepared to take the brunt of the fighting so that the slaughter would be quenched quickly enough. Yet, all could see that sweeping shadow from above and as the bombardment had waned they saw the vaunted custodian of the Emperor swoop low.
It had seemed that the Black Hawk, though perhaps unnerving the Steel Lords, swept towards the gatehouse, landing amongst what tattered remnants of resistance remained. Any who gazed saw bodies being thrown from the walls, often dismembered or bisected. The Emperor’s chosen had a clear objective to aid the assault for the time being - whether or not her ire towards the Thunder Warriors would be made apparent was still up for Ushotan’s speculation, but at least for now, the dreaded executioner remained away from them all.
This daring assault precipitated the defenders’ frenzy. Flashes of sorcerous light, unnerving and painful to the eye, burst atop the gates, retreating along the battlements as the tumbling silhouettes of the fallen were outlined darkly against them. Neither the Steel Sentinels nor the Thunder Warriors were to be disappointed in their undiminished zeal: the heavy metallic jaws of the citadel swung open, slowly at first, then gaining speed as if eager, with a loud metallic groan which was heard by the foremost ranks through the din of the bombardment. Out from it rushed a pestilential avalanche, the black blood of Maulland Sen distilled to its most noisome and corrupt.
Misshapen, contorted, pierced by a tangle of corroded metal, the shapes that spilled out onto the slope gave pause even to the hardened Army vanguard. Many of them bore little resemblance to humanity: grotesque mutants with a dozen limbs, or else none at all, crawling like ignoble worms and boneless slugs; faces without eyes, noses or mouths, jaws snapping and contracting beneath membranes of skin, teeth tearing the very muscle that set them into motion. Some were stunted and minute like children, but screamed with a malice and ferocity born of ages. Others towered, huge and loathsome, repellent grins of unthinking bloodlust drawn over their lipless maws. Blades and spikes transfixed them gruesomely in ritual patterns, fresh gashes drawn across flabby and leathery skin to propitiate their cruel gods of battle.
Behind the wave of mutants came the witch-marked warriors of the priest-king. They were hardly less abominable despite largely retaining the guise of man. Pagan etchings scarred their skin where it was exposed by their coarse, spike-studded powered armour, some still oozing fresh. Their lips frothed as they howled their blasphemous war cries, eyes blank and fixed blindly ahead, powerful frames shaking with ill-contained rage. There was in their paroxysm no fear in the face of the formidable army marching against them, though they wielded swords and axes against the column of Imperial armour, nor even of the imposing genehanced troops or the fury of the Thunder Warriors who even now were charging in earnest, quaking the mountain under their feet. It was death or victory for them now, but in their sanguinary rapture they appeared oblivious even to that.
At the same time, horrific shrieks erupted at the flanks of the ascent. From scores of hidden caverns and crevasses, from gaps in the stone and ancient tunnels, like a frothing cascade of impure subterranean rivers there issued another tide of horror. Misshapen brutes crawled out from the gaping stone, similar to vermin swarming from a stirred hive in their aberrant bodies as well as their clambering rush. The cohorts of the Ninth Legion soon found themselves embattled among scrabbling claws and drooling fangs, reinforced within moments by crude cybernetic juggernauts bursting out from the stony ground. The jagged landscape of the mountainside was awash in the glare of flamers. Rivulets of molten snow mixed with tainted blood and poured out onto the road, miring the advancing ranks and rumbling treads. Ice cracked and was stained red.
Over the carnage, the glare of sorcery burned wrathfully, and then, all of a sudden, abated. But the leaden daylight did not succeed it. Somehow, the venomous luminescence had torn away the sun overhead and dragged it away as it withdrew, for now dusk fell over the battlefield. It ought not have - the clouds were thin, and Sol vigorous enough to burn through them, and yet there it was, a thickening murk in defiance of time and space alike. Perhaps it was the shock of this impossible shadow, or perhaps a flock of lesser wyrds rode under its wings like invisible daemons, but uncertainty seeped down from the sky in its wake. Here and there, troops wavered, breaking rank as they warily glared around themselves. Marching feet felt as if they were sinking into something damp and yielding, nauseating to the touch, yet rested on nothing but firm stone. Behind the heedless onslaught of the Steel Lords, the Imperial files slowed, minds and bodies straining against waves of filth and spiritual poison.
Even as men wavered and broke rank, the honourable and faithful Steel Sentinels strode forwards and moved against the foul sorceries of the wyrds. They dared not abandon the mortal men that they had fought with and endured horrors beyond imagination - and for that though some men wavered, the sight of Astartes would shore up the resolve of those closest to them. Arturas, himself, had spurned much of the Auxilia forwards even as men fell in droves from invisible wounds. However, his head craned in the midst of combat, a nod of acknowledgment came from him as he spoke over the vox to his brothers. The Sentinels of Steel had been given a new task, one of great importance if they were to continue to assault on the city.
“Ushotan, I have retasked the Steel Sentinels to hold the battlements and the gatehouse,” came the sharp voice of Amalasuntha over vox as she felled wyrds by the dozens. She moved faster than any of the augmented on the field save for perhaps the Primarch of the Steel Lords and a yellow blur was seen continually diving into hordes of physic anathema only for a red mist to fill the air. Her voice cut through once more, “If you wish to honour your Emperor, I would suggest you redouble your efforts.”
A grunt was the only answer at first. When the Thunder Warrior did reply, his voice was strained, not so much from fatigue as from the audible effort of reigning in his battle-fury enough to speak.
“If the Emperor wins any honour here today, it will be by our hands!” Snarling was audible through the vox, then an impact of crushed bone so tremendous that it reverberated through the bead. “I’d like to see you here in the thick, Custodian! Let us do our work and keep your eyes on yours.”
It could not have been said that the Steel Lords were not doing their utmost to advance, at least if one had a sharp enough eye to ascertain it. The core of the Imperial host could now only see the backs of their rearguard, bent forward ferociously against the incline of the slope. All else had been engulfed by the avalanche of horrors that continued to flood undeterred out of the gates. After the first waves of mutants and witch-marked men, all semblance of cohesion in their ranks had been lost, and they bore down now as a disorderly cavalcade of nightmares. Nigh-amorphous hulks of corpse-skin stitched together with metal wire stomped and brayed like anteglacian pachyderms, cybernetic fusions of man and rot-born fungus ululated from manifold throats, grotesques of translucent, ethereal flesh raged from lattices of small fanged mouths spread like membranes between their many-jointed snarling limbs. It was testament to the courage of the human vanguard that they did not break into maddened panic at the mere glimpses of these abominations of existence, though nor were their minds clearly untouched. Their stares were blank and vitreous, steps heedless as they trudged through torrents of blood and viscera, their gunfire mechanically precise as it withered the horrors that flanked the Thunder Warriors’ mired wedge.
If anything kept the ranks cohesive, it was the example of the Steel Sentinels, steadfast beacons of surety where their genebred predecessors clove thoughtlessly ahead. Even as the ensorcelled darkness became filled with whispers and unclean sounds - as it seemed at moments to everyone that an incubus crouched on their shoulder, hissing venom into their ears and none else - as the sight began to flicker and the faces of years-long comrades contorted into grinning hallucinatory atrocities - the soldiers of Unity held behind their guides, and the maledictions of warlocks were to them as the bloody ordure they waded through. Step by torturous step, bought in wounds of the flesh and mind, the column neared the embattled gates, all the fury and terror of Nordyc powerless to halt it.
The vox crackled to life with a frequency that had until that moment been silent.
“We have the tunnels!” Nyrid, blade-champion of the Reviled, all but spat, hurried but grimly inexpressive, “Keep them focused on the gatehouse! We will take them from the back if we gain the streets.”
The rush of bestial ambushers that had attempted to clasp the column in a pincer from the craggy sides of the ascent had slowed to a trickle. Engaged by the Ninth Legion in their midst, they had been easily picked off by targeted fire from the flanks of the army, and most of those that still survived were now scampering away into the crevasses, all thought of combat abandoned in their desperate bid for survival. Their victors had now, it seemed, claimed the very passages that had allowed the assailants to move out of the citadel undetected. None could see what fiendish struggle was raging in the bowels of the mountain, what unfathomed mazes saw the light for the first time in aeons from the mortiferous flames of promethium. But something did move down below, for suddenly there was a mote of hesitation in the horde at the gates, a slow in the press of disfigured bodies - and then confusion. The packs of monstrosities stomped in place, uncertain where to turn, and were soon being swept aside in the shadow of the high gates. Atop the battlements, the last resistance the Stygian Talons were facing crumpled, the sorcerers and their hirds turning and fleeing to the heart of the citadel, where sickly light still burned on angular balconies.
“They flee now! Cowards and mutants,” Arturas spat, cleaving a fleeing magician apart as he spoke into the vox. His voice carried a calmness with it as he restrained himself, “Lord Ushotan, the Steel Sentinels shall now stay at the gatehouse as ordered. May you bring honour in His name.”
Many of the Steel Sentinels, or those that remained, regrouped at the captured gatehouse intent on holding it with all intent to kill any counter attack. They had taken great losses, however, from the several thousand that had gone into the Nordyc campaign, only near a thousand of them now truly remained, having prioritised protecting their mortal comrades from the worst that the wyrds could muster. What remained now were only those skilled enough to face horrors unseen by mankind with an unflinching resolve. Though relegated to a defensive force, the Steel Sentinels swore to protect the Imperium with all they could muster.
The Stygian Talons, however, had all but vanished as soon as the Steel Sentinels had arrived in the gatehouse proper. No vox chatter to signify where they had gone or what they were doing, save for a clue. A single corpse made of wire and metal in the mockery of human form was left buried amongst the dead - not that any could make heads or tails of why. The consternation was not limited to the forces aboveground, as soon the vox made itself heard.
“The Custodians are in the tunnels!” rasped the raw voice of a Reviled, “The mountain is all but taken! There is no need for them here.”
“Do not mind them,” the Master of the Ninth quelled it, “Push into the fortress! We must have it before Sol’s natural night is on us!”
The battle had indeed now spilled past the gates and into the passages and courtyards of the citadel. The massed ranks of the Imperial Army, previously such a vast and cumbersome target for the defenders’ guns and sorcery, unfolded as they at last brought their numerical superiority to bear against the remnants of the enemy. Squads crisply sheared away from the column as it marched into the jaws of the fortress, branching out to cover every thoroughfare and cramped passage that radiated from the access. The crackle of stubbers began to rise throughout the stronghold, interspersed with the roar of heavier weapons blazing a path through barricades of metal and flesh alike. On the walls, vanguard units clambered to occupy the space cleared by the Stygian Talons. Sparse gunfire still rained on them from the central spires, and warp-lightning smote with no regard for the battlements, but by inches red uniforms covered what had been held by the furs and jagged metal of the barbarians.
To one looking upon the citadel from below, the struggle could have seemed well and decided then, but its last steps were no less gruelling than what had preceded them. The interior of the Maulland Sen holdfast was a hell of its own, all the terror of that blighted land gathered upon a single mountaintop. It seemed as though its walls could not have been built by mortal hands: the stone curved and protruded in ways that ought not have been possible, twisted into precarious shapes which nevertheless did not budge under the fire of autocannons. The angles that had been dizzying to behold from afar, defying the rationality of sight, became dangers in their own right up close. As though surrounded by mirages, the assailants could rarely be sure of where one street ended and where it curved into an intersection; arches and corners that had seemed invisible awned suddenly when one took an unwary step, and sent man stumbling into unsuspected courtyards and alcoves where hungering blades awaited. The architecture of the fortress defied description in ways never before seen. The ground itself seeped treachery, rising or falling into stairways and inclines that were only revealed once feet trod upon them. Windows opened and closed in the walls almost like living eyes, spitting volleys of withering fire before seeming to vanish again.
And in every corner of that nightmarish labyrinth lurked the horrors of Nordyc. Bands of savage warriors in coarse, spiked power armour lay in ambush with fiendish cunning, emerging from unsuspected angles to strike into the midst of advancing units. Monsters that were neither man nor beast crouched under impossible ledges or hung, batlike, from bridges and overhangs, ready to leap down in a storm of malformed claws and rending teeth. Infernal golem-machines stirred in dark recesses and began their clanking march down the streets, each a wall of howling chainblades and unthinking brutality. There seemed to be no end to the miscreations that issued from every shadow; they were eager for blood, fresh where the Imperials were weary, and worst of all they knew the ways of that pernicious maze. Every inch of stonework was a hiding place for them, every foot of paved ground a way for them to emerge behind unsuspecting prey.
But the momentum of the Emperor’s army could no longer be stopped. Men who hesitated before the mind-wracking puzzles of the citadel soon found heart again as the unceasing steps of comrades approached, an iron-shod reminder that they were now masters of the field. Fracturing squads massed again, bristling with gun-barrels and bayonets, and met their ambushers with resolute volleys no matter which side they came from. Flamers swept every suspicious nook, grenades rained into hidden courtyards, forcing the expectant fiends within into clashes that would see them outnumbered. It was arduous, harsh fighting, but the soldiers who had carved their path through Nordyc could no longer be daunted by shadows and ferocity alone. However many of them were lost to twisting corners and abrupt descents, however many fell to the obstinate and sanguinary foe, they were undeterred, and step by gruesome step they advanced.
Nor were they alone as they tightened their grip around the last holdouts. The Reviled had been badly bloodied by the ambushes on the mountainside and then the sightless war in the tunnels, cut down to less than a fifth of their already slender number, but bloodshed had awoken in them a bitter thirst not so easily quenched. They prowled now the fractured maze of the citadel, shadows of blood and steel, clad in metal and bone and flayed skin, animal in the gait of their hunched, slinking steps and the ferocity of their strikes when they met with a roving foe. Even madmen and monstrosities hesitated as they came to face these horrid apparitions, their ragged silhouettes, stark against the smouldering fires they left in their wake, stirring memories of those most hideous Warp-borne visions that had unsettled their minds irreparably. Almost uncaring of their survival, these warriors that seemed to bestraddle the line between Astartes and their foes pounced into the very forces that sought to ambush them, and here a band of barbarians was overwhelmed by their strength, there a towering cyber-mutant toppled by their finer skill.
There was one force, however, that tore through the fortress like no other, undeterred by either the violence of its defenders or the fiendish traps of its architecture. The Steel Lords were no more ten thousand, more than half that number having fallen before they reached the gates, but whether death loomed before their eyes or stood at their shoulder, those blood-mad warriors were blind to it. Their eyes blazed like lightning, their cries were as thunder. Nothing that dared rise in their way endured. Foes were hacked to pieces and trampled without even slowing the armoured wedge. Walls crumbled under the blows of their thunder hammers and the barrage of autocannons. At their head, Ushotan, lost to the mania of bloodshed, cleared the path with the wide bloodred arcs of his plasma-wreathed blade. They did not disperse like the Army had, did not skulk and creep around impossible angles like the Reviled; like a bolt loosed from the Emperor’s own hand, they carved a straight line of ruin from the gates to the central spire.
The last house the rampant Thunder Warriors had veritably pierced through collapsed, battered down to its foundations, its huddling inhabitants crushed under the tread of the invaders. The courtyard before the spire teemed with horrors of the foulest sort, hulking mutants whose gnarled bones were joined with spined metal, furnaces of warpfire lit in their guts, almost more fiend than human, frenzied by the long-delayed expectation of slaughter.
In less than a minute, nothing remained of them.
The heavy metal doors of the tower, etched with leering gargoyles and strange symbols that were frightful to behold, fell like a silken curtain. Within, all was darkness and strange lights, luminous globes of pale corpse-fire drifting like lost souls. There was no above or below, no left or right in that disorienting gloom. Howls, roars and cachinnations taunted and menaced from all sides. Even a superhumanly robust mind would have quailed before this unearthly sight, vainly grasping for the suggestion of anything familiar, and perhaps it would have been lost then as insidious fear stilled it in its grip. Yet the Legio Cataegis was of another sort entirely - not preterhuman, perhaps, in the edge of their wit or the penetration of their insight, indeed not so far from those multitudes of humanity they towered over. That had not been their purpose; but they were wrought to be the first bulwark of Unity, its hardiest defenders, armoured in their grit against both the terrors of war and the insidious nightmares of the wyrd. Stubbornly, they plunged into the dark, not stopping to consider what might lie hidden in it, not allowing themselves to waver. Blinded, disoriented, Ushotan found the steps of a cyclopean winding stairway under his feet, and that was the only hold he needed.
“After me!” he bellowed, and a thousand voices answered him from behind. The Steel Lords could trust nothing but the rhythm of their march and the weapons in their hands as they ascended that skyward hell, but they needed no more than that. The stone they trod upon sought to betray them, undulating and shifting as though it were alive, the very uncertainty of whether its writhing was an illusion or a sorcerous transformation enough to paralyze a less steady spirit than theirs. Vile denizens of that benighted pit swarmed around them. Shamans cast away their tattered robes, and in the sickly light of dancing wisps were transfigured into immense terrors that defied earthly geometry, arcuate towers of flesh with scores of limbs that breathed flame and poison from tetragonal mouths and fulgurated from ninefold evil eyes. Wraiths, daemons, draugar in all the visages that a diseased mind could conceive crashed forth in living waves, mewling, gibbering, cursing in dead languages from Terra’s millenary past.
It was their mistake to have made themselves corporeal, susceptible to fire and sword. The rage of the Thunder Warriors surmounted the apocalyptic visions strewn before them, their stupendously puissant bodies pushed through fire and lightning, through tooth and ethereal claw. Before their blades, abyssal spawn tumbled back into the dark, trailing blood and venomous bile. Shadows were rent by the sanguine glare of plasma.
Perhaps hours went by in thoughtless carnage where fury clashed and gnawed its own tail. Perhaps it was days or indeed mere minutes, the flow of time itself subverted among the walls of that infernal bastion - it made little difference to the Thunder Warriors, who hacked, crushed and died without a thought in the baleful murk. Yet at long last, even as he had at the foot of the stairway, their Primarch touched upon something new - a door, it seemed, flat and peaked. It was far smaller than the fortified gate at the base of the tower, and brittle in an unpleasantly organic way, but Ushotan had no time to ponder any gruesome implications. With a kick, the portal burst open in a rain of splinters, and the unnatural shadows seemed to drain through the opening in a wailing flood, leaving behind a dreary stairway that was far narrower than any had expected. At last, the Steel Lords saw light once more.
The space beyond the threshold was almost jarring in its normalcy after the aberrant climb that preceded it. A great long hall spanned what must have been the peak of the tower, cold and bare stone rising to a sharp vault overhead. Unlike the quarters of so many would-be kings and warlords overthrown by the nascent Empire, it was perfectly empty, not even an icon to profane forces or a final line of defenders breaking the desolation of its walls. At the far end, it opened like a cavern onto a wide balcony, gusts of frigid wind buffeting through with nothing to stop them. The sky outside was yet a nauseating amalgam of darkness and twisting strands of viridian light, and outlined against them, far at the edge of the terrace, stood the chamber’s only occupant. So distant, before an army of giants, he seemed minuscule, a miserable bundle of old worm-eaten cloned fur draped on the vague suggestion of a man.
Heavily, without haste, the priest-king of Maulland Sen turned to face the intruders upon his sanctum. He was old, very old, the thin and weather-beaten features under the ragged hood of his cloak scarred by the years and the cold. The hand that rested on the plain gnarled staff that supported his bent frame was that of a mummy. His wild grey beard had never known a comb, it seemed, or even a moment of care. The eyes under the brows of this living corpse, however, were alive, burning with a mad and outlandish force that defied their age, and they held no fear as they met the hungry glares of the titanic blood-spattered warriors that marched at him - only visceral and inexhaustible hatred.
With a triumphant cry, Ushotan raised his sword, ready to cross the chamber in a single rush and strike down the wizened lord of the tribes where he stood, when a heavy hand was laid upon his shoulder. He looked back with an outraged snarl - who of his men would have dared contest his right to the kill? - which turned to confusion as he met with a golden visor. The other Steel Lords around were equally astonished at how the Custodian suddenly stood in their midst, right at the fore of their massed ranks. The battle in the spire had been as a chaotic dream, it was true, but this newcomer was astounding nevertheless. It was a stark reminder that the Custodes had secret arts of battle which they, the Cataegis, did not even suspect, and many faces turned to hard and wary scowls at the thought.
“Hold your hand, Primarch,” the auramite-clad colossus’ words echoed, heavy and solemn, through the vaulted hall. “This one is not for you to finish.”
“And why is that?” Ushotan growled, to the assenting rumble of his warriors, “So you can take that glory? Where were you when we fought for it?”
“The Emperor wishes for him to be taken alive.” The Custodian was imperturbable.
“Ah, the Emperor.” The Primarch lowered his weapon, still simmering with rancour but bridling his rage. Whatever ill words he had for the Custodes - and they were many indeed - even he could not say that they were not always truthful, especially when the will of their master was concerned. “Go, then.”
With measured steps, the golden giant advanced upon the priest-king, who did not waver or shrink before even his presence. Malice blazed in his look, but with the Custodian’s every stride, it became clearer that it was toothless. The shaman had no more dark powers to call upon, no more curses to cast. All he was had been spent.
“Yield,” spoke the giant then, “Your armies have fallen. Your people are no more. The taint you brought upon them will be burned from the face of Terra. You may die here, now - but if you come with me, you may look upon your conqueror a final time.”
The priest-king hesitated, his spiteful glare wandering from the Custodian to the Thunder Warriors and back, the wrinkles and shadows on his ancient face growing deeper. At last his mouth hardened into a bitter grimace, and he cast aside his staff, rising to the full height of his emaciated body.
“Very well, then,” he rasped, and his old voice was a whisper on the wind after that of his captor, “Take me to him. He will hear my death-curse.”
Behind him, the caustic light faded, unravelling into pale gleams that faded into nothing, and the darkness was torn up like clouds scattering after a storm. The sun rose in the northern sky for the second time that day.
The winds of a ceaseless storm howled around the mountain passes, winds ripping at stone with such force that the air itself seemed to scream it wrath. It was not an easy place for man to stand, the craggy fingers of rock towering above even the final fortress of the Confederacy, or what remained of it. Tread was not easy, and the wind might pluck one without sure footing from the rock even with the mountain's cover.
It was here the Emperor stood, and here that he would have his foes brought to him in defeat and supplication.
The Master of Mankind stood and watched the Citadel below as the last preparations for its total destruction were being made. The place was suffused with corruption and festooned with dark lore. It would not simply be enough to defeat its inhabitants, or even destroyed the place. The Emperor would cast down its very memory, the glories won here would be but footnotes, no matter the bravery of his warriors. A sacrifice, but one he would make a thousand times to preserve the future of humanity.
Despite the inhospitable nature of his surroundings, the Emperor stood with little difficulty, and his own enhanced bodyguards seemed hardly to notice the gale. There was no command tent or other signs of the esteem of their lord, for what baubles or grandeur could compare to the Emperor himself? Even now, outside the fierce fire of battle, his presence blazed with a ferocity which put the storm to shame, his armour gleaming with a light without source. The fulness of Nordyc retreated from his very presence, blasting the rock and stone around him free of foul taint at his very tread.
“The prisoner approaches, My Lord.” The words of the nearest Custodian crackled with the energy of the vox, but the Emperor did not need such things to be heard over the gale, not even turning from the view of the chasm below as he replied.
“Bring him forth, let us witness the future together.”
Shadows crept up the mountain slope below the files of the gold-clad guardians, stark against the piling snow. Most stopped some way down the incline, the foremost in their lines lowering themselves to one knee. It was a gesture of reverence rather than fatigue, though they all bore abundantly the traces of a long and arduous battle - their armour was beaten and scarred, smeared with the blood of friend and foe alike. Their stature, however, would not such as to demand rest. Though begrimed with the filth of combat, their own skin was already scarring, and they only appeared lesser before the imposing Custodians. There were among them Thunder Warriors of Ushotan’s host, the Primarch himself at the fore. There were Astartes of the Ninth Legion, bedecked in bone and ragged mutant-skin, the spatters of gore over them tinged into ritual patterns.
Then, the few numbers of the Nineteenth legion knelt farther back - their honorable visages lining the periphery as they silently praised their Emperor for victory. Many held aloft banners with the names of their fallen comrades, brothers who had not been so fortunate to see the end of the campaign and the form of their master.
Meanwhile, many of the Stygian Talons had long since absconded from the battle. Their prey had not been any of the mutants or witches that the Imperium had fought. Only a select two had chosen to stay, one amongst them being none other than the Black Hawk herself, who trudged up behind Ushotan. Her eyes pierced into the back of the warrior’s head with an air of judgement almost as an executioner looking upon something irredeemable.
Between the files of the silent warriors, a lone Custodian ascended, the beat of his spear-haft upon the ground marking the rhythm of his steps. He led ahead of him the captive, with no bonds or restraints. So evident was it that they were unneeded: the once-king seemed to vanish among that entourage of giants, a minute and insignificant blot creeping among their looming shadows. He limped heavily, but scorned the need for a walking staff, stubbornly forging ahead without allowing himself a moment’s respite. His keeper’s steps in his wake were effortless, content to keep pace with the dregs of his pride.
After a laborious score of final steps, the deposed priest-king finally passed between the uppermost Custodes, and stood at the feet of the Unifier. He was breathing heavily, both his age and the tremendous effort of the climb taking a fearsome toll on his worn body. His beard was tangled by the whipping wind, and the edges of his coarse cloak lashed the sides of his face. Yet still he looked up at his vanquisher, and the bile in his eyes was undimmed by awe or fear.
“Your lands have been claimed, your temples cast down and your monsters slain.” The Emperor spoke to the Priest-King, even though his words were heard by all there was a personal tone to them that quite set it apart from the booming tone of command the Emperor could wield with ease. He turned back from those assembled to regard again the view, beckoning with one hand for the fallen leader to join him at the lip of the mountain edge. If he complied of his own accord or not, he would be brought forth.
“I do not gloat, these are truths, necessary ones, for only together can humanity prosper. All of us in one purpose, so for this fleeting moment, you too are of the Crusade, a subject of the Imperium, and so I will hear you wisdom, your mind, your soul, so that we may learn lessons from all of us, even if they are simply lessons of warning.” The Emperor's armoured fists met behind his back as he beheld the twisted spire of the enemy.
“Soon the lies of divinity will be stripped away, perhaps you see already, how much greater we are without them, how you and your people have been held back.” The Master of Mankind waved a single fist in a downward arc, and the demolition began, a chain of detonation at the base of the polluted affront to architecture as the spire began to fall. “From the rubble your people will rise, alongside us.”
“Rubble,” the old man repeated bitterly. He limped to the rim of the precipice, unsteady on the ice-slick rock. Unmoved as they had been until now, his craggy eyes winced as they saw the agonising throes of what had been his city. The Custodian remained standing behind, impassible. “That is all you leave in your wake. You call it Unity, but it is a field of ashes. What more can rise from it now that you have abolished miracles?”
The Priest-King averted his face as a cloud of dust bloomed where the tower had stood. “I did not save the people of this wild land with machines or thaumaturgy, though I gave them all those things. No, I brought them gods. Harsh gods, certainly, but we deserve no others. It was the faith that gave them courage to struggle every day.”
He turned a contemptuous gaze on the troops assembled lower upon the slope. “In dreams I heard your armies as they approached, calling out your name like we chanted our prayers. You cannot take away our need for something greater, nor can you shoulder that mantle yourself. No one man can. One day, you will stumble, and all that you have built will fall. This is my last prophecy.”
“There is no prophecy, only the destiny we make.” The words of the Emperor did not rebound as they had before, but it was soon swallowed in noise by the drummed salute of Custodian fists meeting breastplates in a heavy thud of metal. “And Our Destiny is the Stars Themselves.”
op2024
Izurich
Archetype Zero
Lord Zee
Cyclone