[center][h1][u][b]Slaughter of Sanctii[/b][/u][/h1] [h3][b]Blazing Assault[/b][/h3] [hr] [img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1129184116840087683/1166088768659406959/OIG_4.jpg?ex=654937cb&is=6536c2cb&hm=9d2545f7697d3a2ab93d7264eb675cc4166910d9ce50ffd48304ed09de8f34b7&[/img][/center] [hr] [i][b]Sanctii AOR, Inside Thermal Flue A00034/76B[/b][/i] Five thousand souls trudged down the gigantic flue, each step kicking up a cloud of ash and carbon. Each member of the 31-3’s assault party wore a rebreather to protect them from the bad air quality, which the tacticae scribes assured Stavin they would definitely clog the lungs of an unaugmented human in seconds. They illuminated their way with high-lumen lamp packs, the beams cutting back and forth across the darkness. Twenty minutes had passed, which was good. It meant they were five minutes from their designated exit points, a gap in the flues that allowed excess pressure and carbon build up to void into the cavernous space below the hive without stressing the walls of the flue. It was also why they simply couldn’t block the exit to the flue to get the same result - such gaps were spaced every few kilometers. You could strike the exhaust path with orbital lances, atomics, missiles, it simply wouldn’t affect it. The flue, like all of Sanctii, was a marvel of engineering. Stavin’s auspex began to beep at his hip. He unhooked it from his pistol belt, and peered at the screen, holding his lamp pack to it. The air temperature had raised. Ambient humidity had dropped sharply. The air began to smell charred as the carbon particles in the air gathered heat. Stavin’s eyes widened. His body broke into a cold sweat. He was aware of the stink of it, trapped in his rebreather, which suddenly felt as claustrophobic as a casket. Their estimate for thermal purge - it was flawed. He realized that now. He and the scribes had estimated this most critical detail based on the [i]average[/i] geothermal power load of a hive the size of Sanctii. Tell me, John, he thought. Is a city firing defense batteries and powering an entire defensive grid in wartime constituting the average geothermal power load? He cursed, and keyed his vox as he began to run. Severina followed him. “Colonel?” She shouted. “Colonel, what is it? What does the auspex say?” “[i]All elements, double time![/i]” Stavin shouted, “[i]Go, go, go! Get on you bastards![/i]” “[b]Shit![/b]” Severina said, her legendary facade of bravery cracking. “[b]Shit![/b] I thought we had ten minutes!” “We would if the city was at peace, Augusta!” Stavin shouted. Soldiers began to scramble with them, kicking up huge clouds of ash as they began to run for their lives. _____ When Whitaker and Caleb heard the vox command, they began to run as fast as they could. Other soldiers jogged, some even just speed-walked. What was the hurry? The colonel could sprint ahead and get a medal if he wanted. They jeered as Whitaker and Caleb passed them. Only a few troopers took the Colonel’s warning seriously - they were running too. “Never you mind them, Troopie!” Whitaker yelled, “They won’t be laughing when Sanctii turns the burner up!” Caleb saved his breath. He would need it - wearing the rebreather felt like breathing through a straw. They shot from the middle of the pack to the front of it, and suddenly, the Colonel’s warning made sense. The tunnel, which had previously been quite dark, suddenly had a very bright light at the end of it, kilometers distant, but was putting out enough light to render everyone inside clearly. The air, still, began to move in a fetid breeze. “Oh [b]fuck[/b]!” Caleb shouted. “[b]Oh shit[/b]! The vent! I thought we had-” “We don’t anymore, Troopie!” Whitaker yelled. “Push on!” Caleb, who had been flagging, felt fear surge adrenaline through his body. Tired limbs, stressed lungs, none of it mattered. His body had made its decision, and it wanted to live. Other soldiers, that had jeered, or jogged, or lollygagged, now cursed or shouted or begged or pleaded in fear. A relatively ordered advance disintegrated into a pell-mell dash for safety, the pressure gap that for the slowest soldiers was a klick away, with only a minute or so to get there. Not all were gonna make. Not even close to all. The tunnel began to get very hot. The breeze turned into a full on gale. The wind was hot, drying his eyeballs with the heat and pressure. The insanity of the plan now fully dawned on Caleb - they were not meant to survive at all. The assault party was 5,000 strong - a ridiculous number for a stealth raid - because they knew, they knew, that after the flue the amount of people left would be enough for the job. The cruel insanity of the Imperium. The empty platitudes Caleb had filled his pamphlets with, those dry, stolid refutations of the Imperial Truth, of Unity, suddenly burned bright and hot in him. They made sense now. They mattered now. They were the truest things he’d ever said. And to live, he’d have to discard all of those human sentiments. He would have to become as insane as the Emperor . He and Whitaker were close now. They reached the gap and jumped, not even looking what was beneath them. Fortunately, they landed on worker’s gantry not ten feet below, a jarring impact that knocked the breath out of the both of them. They had landed on their packs, however, and their spare uniforms and rations had soaked up the blow. Others climbed the access ladders down, and some lept, landing on the gantries sometimes, sometimes missing, screaming into the caverns below. When the flue vented, it was sudden. A roar with no buildup. A pillar of fire burned through the gap that Caleb had just exited. There had been men on the edge of the gap - gone now. So utterly destroyed not even ash remained. Men still on the ladders going down to the gantry suffered a similar fate, their torsos and heads caught in the incredible heat and pressure, burning up just a fiercely, though a millisecond or two slower. The soldiers on the ladders, but not in the path of the flames screamed as the metal they held superheated in seconds. They let go, falling, landing badly, breaking legs, knees, necks. Some joined the ones that missed the gantry in the first place, falling into the depths. Caleb had never seen so many people die all at once. He closed his eyes against the horror, curling up and covering his ears as the 31-3 suffered their first, terrible casualties. - The slaughter seemed to go on and on, but when Stavin checked his watch after the flue’s heat dissipated, it had only been thirty seconds. The longest, most dearly paid for thirty seconds of his miserable life. He checked his auspex, slapping the thing to get the display to show clearly. He switched it from atmospheric detection to collar signal detection. He cursed. Of five thousand souls, about one hundred and twenty had made it. One company. [b]But they were in[/b]. [hr] The alabaster walls of Sanctii stood before them as a mountain of otherworldly metal, yet the world around them remained consumed by the combined calamity of war and nature. The Urschic lands refused to bow to mankind, relentlessly whipping into a furious blizzard unlike any other. Where men and women hadn’t died to the vicious torrent of Sanctii’s defenses, the bitter cold and diamond-sharp hail sank through auxilia thermals and exposed flesh alike. Some fell mid-sprint as they finally succumbed to wounds, frostbite, and exhaustion. Others persisted through lakes of dead bodies, their uniforms caked in vaporized ash and blood. Their endurance had paid off as hundreds of thousands of auxilia still battered limb and rifle against the Sanctiian bulwark; however, it was in vain as the void shields prevailed against any and all attacks. The primarch observed an entire squad of auxilia tossed from the top of the wall, slamming into the snow in a geyser of blood and ice. Several more individuals fell in a continuous rain of warriors, each dying either during their descent or on landing. He noted that none of the carcasses were his God-Slayers, perhaps they had managed to establish a foothold atop the Sanctiian defenses. Those useless thoughts were discarded from his mind, and replaced with the current situation at hand. Caligula had remained near him along with fifteen other gene-warriors they had rendezvoused with. Tiberius disappeared once they had successfully integrated with the frontline, venturing off to accomplish some unforeseen task. If the third cadre captain had been unreliable, then Aeternus would’ve cursed his name for such cowardice. Luckily, he knew what his fellow genewarrior was capable of. Several red-garbed auxilia and thunder warriors roared in strained effort, a jury-rigged battering ram hefted amongst their number. It was a disgusting thing of precise, rudimentary engineering. A super-heavy battle tank’s primary cannon with several plasma cores, grenades, and rockets attached to the front end. The group ran forward in a suicidal attempt to breach the wall for good, cheers from other nearby soldiers driving them to further heights. The culmination of their efforts was rewarded with a beautiful explosion that quaked the nearby area. A hundred men began to swarm the area, believing that they had actually created their godsent relief. Horror awaited them as the wall held strong against the improvised weapon of mass destruction. Hints of the shimmering shield only further drove their assault into new levels of despair. Wall-mounted turrets and Sanctiian protectors fired down from their positions, slaughtering those that had attempted to penetrate into their beloved city. Men cried, meat squelched, and armor broke in a cacophony of death. Aeternus refused to avert his dark eyes from the mass murder that occurred several meters away from his position. It sickened him that he couldn’t defy all of the odds set against them, but perhaps their deaths would mean something once victory was attained. “[b]Aeternus![/b] We’re ready to climb the wall. Tiberius reports success in attaining some degree of foothold, several other of our kin are with him. Fortunately,” Caligula began to rapidly speak as another group of thunder warriors joined their party. Archaic grappling gear was passed from their hands into the climbers awaiting gauntlets. Genewarriors swiftly affixed their armor with the components, assisting where necessary, and began their climb in earnest. “The path is clear for us due to a bloody wake, most likely made by Nero and his Despoilers. It is a calming thought knowing that he thought this far ahead!” “Then let it begin.” The joke was hollow at best, and haunting at worst. Aeternus knew that he would one day have to deal with Nero’s affliction, but Rex was content with utilizing his genewarrior’s rage to achieve his goals. He affixed one of the harnesses to himself, a titanium tactical web of hooks, tethers, and diamantine spikes. Several footholds, cracks, and other embellishments in the walls became clear to him. Past attempts to scale the bulwark in the past hours had led to the continual success of their siege. The primarch turned one last time to witness the nightmare behind him before beginning his ascent. The golden dropship of the Stygian Talons danced in the sky against the airships, while several jet bikes circled in flanking strikes with guardian spears and andrastite lances. His Destroyers, those that ambushed the aircraft from the ground, continued to shatter and break voidshields across the emerging fleet. Even as they died to blinding beams of supernova energy, those thunder warriors refused to falter in their perpetual onslaught. Hundreds of thousands of auxilia continued to rush from the backlines, pushed on by mortal commanders and great lines of battle tanks. It was an endless horde of onrushing flesh, marshaled by the greatest commander in humanity. The thought nearly brought a smile to his scarred lips, yet it was forgotten altogether as he began to climb the wall. They fired on his position and those beside him as they climbed. His great obsidian blade, [i]Apocrypha[/i], seared with plasmic furry as he ascended the alabaster bulwark. Every inch that Aeternus climbed felt like a mile of mire-trudging as his refractor field sparked over and over again in protest. Other warriors, fellow wallclimbers that defied destiny, were not as fortunate as him. Beams of energy, disintegration rays, and iridium slugs annihilated those on either side of the Primarch. Wrath, fresh and hot, spilled into his body as his genewarriors unceremoniously died. He raised the weapon attached to his wrist, unleashing a storm of infernal rounds that detonated flesh and metal into cobalt flames. Even if momentarily, they were allowed to scale the wall with minimal resistance. [hr] Credit: [@MarshalSolgriev] (Aeternus/God-Slayers/Sanctii), [@BornOnBoard] (Colonel Stavin/Thirty-One-Third Penal Legion)