[h3][u]Central Spire 
Delos Hive, 20-63 [Praxia][/u][/h3]
[hr]The death wrought throughout the final bastion of traitorous resistance within Delos Hive was astounding. Her daughters lay in scores, crumpled and unmoving, with the number of Imperial Army surrounding them far more than Nelchitl was comfortable counting. The numbers crunched in the mind of the Emerald Priestess were nearly enough to dampen her mood as she stormed forward in a flurry of death at those traitors fool enough to meet a Primarch in direct combat. She swung her massive chainsword in a sweeping ark in front of her, eviscerating a cohort of armored humans in the strange power armor that many of them further into the final hive spire were equipped with. She revved the chainsword, its teeth spinning wildly as she did, freeing bits of armor and flesh alike as she finished the math in her mind and despaired at the losses her Daughters and the human Auxilia must be suffering storming the last sanctum in the hive. 

Her vox crackled into life, filling her helmet with the distorted voice of a man in the midst of combat. “The 250th is halted in--” the transmission was drowned out by the sounds of massed gunfire and a sizable explosion that Nelchitl could feel through the soles of her armor, “--assistance required urgentl--” the transmission cut completely and the Primarch found her already burning rage stoked further at the thought of the Emperor’s chosen in such desperate need.

“Communications, get me the last station's location. Send me the 31st Company at all haste, and reroute the nearest Exertus forces to assist at once.”

There was a curt response and a data burst quickly streamed into the Emerald Priestess’ helmet. 

Nelchitl felt an unusual emotion welling in her chest as anxiety began to grip her. She continued to fight, felling groups of the armored traitors in flashes of plasma and brutal strikes of her chainsword. All the while she brooded on the happenings about this world. Her daughters were heavily engaged at every turn, House Cadaval; lauded and venerable; had lost several of their exalted machines, and there seemed no end to the engagement as the Imperial forces inched forward into the traitors bleeding for every step. Their numbers were great, their equipment advanced and unknown even to the Tech Priests of Mars, their tactics seemingly hand-tailored to counter the armored shock tactics of the Emperor’s Angels. The depth of betrayal on 20-63, on Praxia, was beyond the scope that Nelchitl had ever thought possible in her Emperor’s Imperium.

There was far more going on here than so seemed. She required answers, she required more forces; more ships, more equipment, and more men. She crunched the numbers and silently relished in the short releases of violence as she tore her way forward. More than anything, she required the guidance of her Sister.

Opening a private vox line directly to the Huntress. Nelchitl spoke quickly, the frustration in her voice evident, “Sister, we must end this at once. We take far too many losses, my committed companies are becoming no more than tatters. I fear your daughters fare much the same.” a coded data-burst would be sent between the two Primarchs containing the position of the Exertus regiment as she continued on, “I move to assist an Exertus regiment and have vectored more forces to assist, join me and we shall finish this in one final stroke.”

As her sister’s voice reached her, Sekhmetara rode the winds of rage. She allowed the emotion to surge through just as much as she drifted across the air herself, the modified chassis of her jetbike roaring beneath her as she regarded the vast battlefield of the traitor hive below her, drawing closer to the towering central spire which comprised their final objective. They had won every battle, yet they were losing the war. Losing because there was information and factors they were not privy to, a state of affairs that enraged her more than anything else. Her daughters were the fine blade, measure twice, cut once. Now they were swinging wildly in the dark. Still, her daughters may have been precise by the standards of her expansive, varied family, but they were still Astartes. For every one which died, the rebels bled in their hundreds. It was not a trade she would allow to continue.

“As you say Sister, I fight with you.” Sekhmetara replied, before she lunged from the saddle of her vehicle. From the streamlined armour of her suit, blade like wings extended, a series of grav-chutes of much larger design to account for her Primach build, the Queen of Mithra surged through the air,  tucking her form into itself as she crossed the distance to the spire. Her form struck the observation glass panel she was aiming for with the force to turn an Astartes into a smear, but likewise enough to shatter the reinforced glass. She was not Astartes, and her armoured form wrenched through it, barely checking her momentum. She was falling, but to those within, she was akin to an avenging angel falling from the heavens themselves, surging into the vast chamber beyond. The enemy were rallying to engage her sister’s position within the same hall, they would never get the chance. The Huntress fell among them, the long, slender haft of her glaive spinning about her in a movement that was as much a dance as it was warfare. With every slight turn of her body and weapon, lesser humans died. The mysterious power armour the more elite rebels wore could turn aside bolter fire, but it could not turn aside her. Her weapon sliced through Ceramite with the barest pop of pressure, the human within each suit turned to jelly by the sudden expansion of force and heat. Her sister killed as well, perhaps with less grace, but with insurmountable aggression which more than made up for their difference in efficiency of movement. Two whirlwinds of death storming towards each other. The final foe sought to hold her in combat for a moment, a figure which would have towered over a mortal man wreathed in armour more akin to the tactical dreadnought armour spreading throughout the legions. Flensing claws wreathed from gauntlets as the being yelled a challenge to her.

She did not have the time or will for a duel with mortal traitors. As the human began his charge, a blazing halo of solar light bathed around her features, her human-like eyes becoming obscured by golden light, before the power leapt from her. The gifts of her birth made manifest, the streams of white hot energy forced into reality burned through the air, striking the traitor with enough force and heat as to render them into cauterised flesh and ash in moments. Sekhmetara did not suppress the sneer as she regarded what had become of an enemy that had thought themselves worth more than the briefest moment of her time, before turning to regard her approaching sister.

“My daughters will keep them from reinforcing the holdout, we cut off the head here.”

Were it any other day, any other war, Nelchitl may have found herself incredibly moved by the preternatural resemblance her Sister held to the Emperor on that fateful battlefield of Ixhun where they first met. Descending from the heavens as if held aloft by unseen wings, Sekhmetara unleashed a dazzlingly brilliant psychic assault on a mere mortal fool enough to stand in the way of the furious Primarch. Like the appearance of her father, Nelchitl watched as the radiance of a star was unleashed on the traitor, leaving only ash where they had once stood defiant before the closest thing to a demigod the universe may have to offer.

Coming alongside her sister, Nelchitl placed a gauntleted hand on her shoulder and raised her chainsword to point toward the still resisting traitors. 

“One swing of the blade and we finish this action.” she scowled as a bolt of energy deflected off her armor, “I tire of their insistence.” 

Taking her hand from her sister Nelchitl removed her helmet dropping it where she stood. The discordant melody of the furious combat around her and the flavors of death and ozone filled her senses. Raising her chainsword high she bellowed as her daughters from the 31st Company arrived to join their Primarch and sisters from the XXth.

“For the Emperor!” she raged, the sounds of her daughter's responses all but drowned out by her singular focus to end this futile last stand once and for all. She crossed the great hall in moments, her chainsword sweeping through traitors in one hand, and buckling turncoats in hammer fisted blows with the other. Blood-lust overcoming her every desire, the Emerald Priestess ripped into the enemy ceaselessly, every blow killing and maiming. She worked through the mortals in front of her with brutal efficiency, the lithe flowing form of battle of her Sister and the Tears nowhere to be seen in the ranks of the Serpents and their Primarch as they crashed into the defenders. So savage was the assault of the Serpent’s to end the battle, that the amount of matter building in Nelchitl’s chainsword became so complete that the Primarch of the XVIIth began using it as a crude club against the men around her. 

Breaking through a crude barrier, Nelchitl left the useless weapon impaled through a fool behind her and began killing with fists alone. Laughing and howling in equal parts as she crushed heads in her hands and bludgeoned traitors to death with the bodies of their comrades. Her lauded Serpents of the Assault squads joining in the horrendous melee around her with cries of reverence for the Emerald Priestess and the Emperor alike.

While Nelchitl and her daughters fought like the roaring wind of the hurricane, pulling the enemy apart, often literally, Sekhmetara advanced as its eye, a centre of calm in the torrent of violence raging around her. Were she not a being of genetic perfection standing in shining armour of her home planet’s distinctive weave and scheme, she might almost go unnoticed. The enemy were, by nature of the Serpents hacking them to pieces, forced to essentially ignore her as she took in the scene, noted the flow of combat and the enemy. She did not care for their individual deaths, although her super-attuned senses noted every Serpent who fell. Another name to a growing list of crimes committed by the traitors in the name of a false freedom. It was not her blade which lashed out for vengeance now, but the weapon of her other hand. With almost dismissive gestures, the battle-gauntlet erupted with precise volkite-fire, the invisible death cooking rebels within their armour, turning them to slurry within the protective shielding which could blunt the chew of bolter fire. She seemed passive, but she was anything but, each decision a scything blow to the enemy’s ability to reform and repel the invaders from their final sanctum in the hive.

When the fighting pushed up into the final chamber, the den of betrayal which had spun this city into its throes of defiance, she changed in a blur. Sekhmetara leapt, springing like the tyrantigers of her homeworld through the air, the six arms of her grav-chutes extending outwards. The blade-like appearance of each arm proving that appearances are not always deceiving, slicing through those who tried to move to flank her even as she was carried through the air, the mono-blading along each wing slicing as lethally as her spear. She landed among their council of dignitaries, those panicked faces who had brought ruin to their people. She had decided which one she would spare before she had leapt, the rest were dead with the next blink of the eye, her glaive moving faster than the human eye or mind could follow.

“You.” She spoke with dripping contempt as she seized the flabby form of the politician by the neck, hefting the man’s considerable bulk from the ground into the air before her. Despite appearances, he did not mentally collapse as many did. Of course he whimpered and gasped, but that was the biological reaction of any human caught in the vice of a superior predator. He did not, however, fight to beg her for anything through his collapsing larynx. Her very low impression of the man increased just a little. At least they had something approaching fire.

She reversed her grip, allowing the man a gasp of air, before clutching his neck from the back as she held him aloft, turning him around the chamber so he could witness the slaughter of his people, pulling her lips up beside his ear as they watched together. “Do you see what you have done? What your cry for false-freedom has earned you? You had your place in this new galaxy of reason and progress, my legion would have brought you all into a glorious future.” Her voice was barely a whisper, before one hand took the back of his head, forcing the man to look upon the advancing form of Nelchitl, ripping through armoured rebels with her fists alone. “Now this is the future of your sorry little planet.” She dropped the man, letting him slump with a moan of pain and fear forwards. Slowly, her foot pressed to the back of his head, pushing him forwards into a pool of spent viscera collating on the floor from his many slain colleagues. It was no effort for the primach to hold him there as he drowned, each second of struggle a soothing balm to her rage at the situation. The man died well before Nelchitl reached her, and the serene calm had returned to Sekhmetara’s features.