[center][b][h2]The Cleansing of Nordyc[/h2]

[h3]The First Blow[/h3][/b]

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After the long, thunderous prelude of the bombardment, the storm seemed to abate. The trails of artillery fire that had torn through the sky with furious roars grew slower and sparser, then stopped altogether, leaving the angrily howling northern wind and the swirl of snowy dust the sole masters in the leaden heavens. It could have seemed, for a brief and deceptive moment, that peace might have had a tenuous opportunity to reassert itself over the northern waste. This hope, however, would soon have proved vain to any who cast their eyes down from the now unperturbedly restless skies and unto the earth below, where the stirring of mankind’s ever eager lust for battle belied the moment of respite’s true nature. It was no more than a fleeting spell of calm before greater forces yet collided to set off the tempest’s fullest and bloodiest magnitude.

Already, the lightly undulant line of the horizon was beginning to blacken with sinister shadows. Stirred like so many hornets by the volleys against their forts, the teeming throngs of the wyrd-poisoned techno-tribals of the northern confederation were spilling out onto the plain, eager to trample the invaders in open combat rather than perish under their crumbling walls. On the other side of the field, those that marched under the Raptor’s standard began to move against them. Vast ranks wrapped in furs and thick cloaks shuffled, clutching their protective garb against the unremitting Nordyc chill. The steel-clad giants of the Primarch Ushotan’s legion preceded them on the formation’s wings with grim eagerness, here and there breaking into a run with feral snarls on their faces before being reluctantly recalled to order by their little more disciplined sergeants.

Closer to the center of the Imperial line, a cluster of figures in slate-coloured carapaces kept pace with the more sedate of the Legio Cataegis. They were not each as massive as the Thunder Warriors, and a mere fraction of their number, but their serried ranks were straighter, and their loping advance more focused. The black metal of rough, skeletal-looking augmentic limbs blended with the gray of their plate and the unvarnished metal of their chainswords, the soft golden halo around the crest of their leader’s helmet the only bright spot in their dour troop.

Behind them closely followed amongst the newest of the Legions, known merely as the Steel Sentinels, numbering lesser than those such as the ones that advanced before them. Led by a gene warrior bearing a powered sword and shield, his blade itching for the hollowed combat promised to his kin. Yet, without the excitement that ran into his veins, Legion Master Arturas Pend spoke into his vox, “Master Skorr, cousin, the nineteenth are advancing behind your force. Know that your rear shall be secure and we will ensure these blighted spawns do not break through your flanks.”

Small companies began to disperse amongst the rear of the centerline, readying themselves for an assault to follow up any gains that their cousins may make. Arturas marched at the head of his force, eyeing down the foul opponents that he had been ordered to show no quarter to. Other vox chatter entered his ears as his officers began to feed reports of the Thunder Warriors’ eagerness, a fact he would relay to the front, “Be wary of the instability of our predecessors, cousin. They seem much too eager for open combat.”

“I cannot say I like them,” returned Skorr’s voice, tinged with the whistling Antarctic accent, “They are like the mirror of the barbarians ahead of us. If we can count on robust sides despite their disorder, you have our thanks. But what of the others? Was there no third legion of ours here today?”

“That would be us, esteemed comrades of the ninth and nineteenth.” A new voice crackled in, an Achaemenid noble’s accent tinting each syllable. “Our numbers are very few, and so we hold ourselves in reserve waiting to strike. I assure you, our presence will not be missed once we act. However we are few enough that we would be wasted in the initial clash. Tie the foe down for us and I promise you, the warriors of the Fifteenth will not be found wanting.”

In the back lines of the Imperial formation, the Sirens of Terra readied themselves. Small in number, it was as their Legion Master had said, they would simply be lost in the maelstrom of battle were they to join the initial clash. Instead the Fifteenth - not even a full thousand strong - prepared themselves to deliver the coup de grace. When the enemy forces were tied down, the Legion would leap into action and deliver the killing blow. 

Though the bulk of the Legion held back from the front lines, a few of its number had deployed to the front regardless, marching forward in their lavender patterned armor alongside Achaemenid auxilia, the mortal soldiers accustomed to the warm climate further south shivering in the cold as they did so. They would be of little use held back to assist with the Legion’s inevitable strike, and so they and a few of the emperor’s gifted gene-warriors would help to ensure exactly that.

“Then it would seem our battle line is made up,” Arturas spoke, watching as lines grew ever closer and closer. The Master of the Nineteenth pointed his blade past the legion that moved ahead of him and spoke clearly into the vox, transmitting to all the Astartes and Proto-Astartes available, “As the Emperor wills, let us fall upon these monsters and let there be no quarter. Show these beasts steel! Show them the Truth! Let our guns silence their prayers, and let our swords stab at the heart of their faith! For Raptor and Imperium!”

A hoarse, staggered cheer rose from the lines in response as the foe came into view. Even in this darkest age of Terra, it seemed, few places could have mustered such an enormity of malformation and grotesquerie. Thinner but wider than the Imperial formation, threatening to engulf it with burgeoning force, the hordes of Maulland Sen bore forward with a cacophony of inarticulate howls, barbarous chants and tortured metallic cries. Mobs of savages draped in ragged furs and sparse plates of beaten armour, cultic symbols visibly scarred into their skin where it was carelessly exposed despite the cold, roared as they brandished blades and crude stubbers. A closer look from augmented eyes revealed the clear touch of unclean forces upon them. Several faces in the mob were missing an eye, a nose, an ear, or else had a third pupil glaring balefully from improbable angles. Others were misshapen as if made of crumpled clay, lopsided jaws drooling ferally in the tangle of wild beards. Far too many hands, not all of them humanly proportioned, reached out from the human mass.

Less mentionable forms yet towered over it. Thick-limbed giants rivalling the Thunder Warriors stamped and growled with bestial voices, products of a gene-craft far cruder than what had birthed the Hymalazian legions: their heads, where they were not covered by ungainly rounded helms, were a hideous sight, eyes, teeth and folds of skin commingled in such a chaos that it was amazing the brutes were alive at all. But live they did, and their tremendous spiked mauls and chainaxes tore the air with frightful energy. Cybernetic miscreations, like ambulant trees with trunks of stretched flesh surmounted by thrashing metallic branches, pushed to the forefront, hunger for either bloodshed or release writ large in their vitreous steel-caged eyes. Gleams of sickly light passed over the infernal mob, their source uncertain but their menace palpable.

Uncaring of the enemy’s monstrosity, the Steel Lords were already rushing to meet them. Curt volleys of bolter and stub-gun fire were exchanged between the approaching files, the tell-tale red of Ushotan’s unstable plasmagun flaring somewhere to the right, before a crash of metal and clamour of screams signalled the beginning of the melee. Nordyc-men and Thunder Warriors tore at each other with wild abandon, and the dry soil was soon heavy with blood.

“Reviled by flesh! Death walks with us!” Nyrid’s voice rose in the relative clarity of the center as the blade-champion emerged at the head of his files, waving his sword forward.

“Death walks with us! [i]Graachal! Qasechik![/i]” answered a cry from the slate-armoured warriors behind him, the unifying language of the Raptor blending with fragments of harsh dialect from their half-remembered youth. With practiced agility, their ranks extended and became a crescent, bristling with sharp wedges along its fore. Never halting its motion, the arcuate formation continued to gain speed, angling as it surged to meet the frothing rage of Maulland Sen.

The nineteenth for their part did not engage with the enemy line, not initially, their forces content to observe behind the fighting. Yet, there was an unease in the Steel Sentinels for the lines grew chaotic as the screech of metal against metal rang in the air. The signal came in parts, Arturas sent forth company after company to the front spitting bolt fire and revving chain blades. Their goal was simple, ensure the abominable forces did not break through their lines and increasingly company after company had to sprint to the right flank as the Thunder Warriors, so dedicated to their carnage moved much faster than their auxiliary forces could keep up. 

Arturas himself ran amongst the right flank of their fighting, his blade spinning and his shield flaring as he and his officers locked step with one another. Many others of his legion refused to break rank as they dogmatically held to their line. Many began flinging grenades past their shield walls, fragmentation tearing through the crowds of clustered combatants as they slowly made their way forwards. Screams of the damned may have filled the air, but the Sentinels allowed not one shout to be heard from their mouths with their focus solely upon maintaining the battleline. 

The bulk of the Fifteenth lay in reserve, behind the wailing clash of steel and the shrieks and groans of the dying in the unfolding maelstrom. They stood in silence, the din of rending metal and tearing flesh dampened by distance and by the bulk of the engines of war that stood around them. Their time would come, they knew, but even so it sat ill with many to simply wait for the opportune moment to strike. They had trust in the strength of arms of the others, of course, and of their own volunteers and auxilia in the front line, but even for the mind of an Astartes trained as the ultimate weapon - the waiting was almost unbearable.

At the front, the auxilia and the volunteers of the Sirens felt no such mounting tension. Around them on all sides the hideous screech of grinding metal and earth shattering explosions split the air as the two armies drew near. Fighting in tight, disciplined formations the Achaemenid auxilia held their formations as they poured accurate, lethal fire from infantry rifle and vehicle mounted heavy weapon alike into the enemy. The hulking power armoured forms of the Sirens, some bearing archaeotech heirlooms passed down through noble lineages of the Empire. They raised their hands, shouting words of encouragement and defiant war cries to the echoing cheers of the auxilia around them as they steadily advanced.

“Sons and daughters of the Achaemenid Empire!” One of them shouted, her voice amplified across the formation, “We are first among all and second to none! Do your duty to your Emperor and tell your daughters and sons that you stood with the Imperium of Man on this day!”

A chorus of voices answered in response, mostly mortal, with the voices of the astartes of the fifteenth joining in. The Auxilia of the Fifteenth surged forward, advancing with speed and in good order towards the enemy in tandem with the other imperial forces.

It was but a short space that divided them now, marked less by distance than by the tangle of clashing forms all across the field. Savagery clung about the people of Nordyc like a noisome mantle, but none could have faulted their courage. Inexhaustibly they hurled themselves against the compact ranks of their foe, new faces contorted by rage and mutation surging forward to replace the many who fell. In the van and on the flanks they could find no breach. The Thunder Warriors’ unremitting advance hammered them; the undulant wedges of the Ninth Legion, advancing and withdrawing like the teeth of a chainsword along their line, viciously ground those caught between them; walls of steel and gunfire met them where they forced ahead. More warriors streamed from the collapsing forts, but the human tide had slowed to a trickle, miring itself in a stagnant churn of dead and mangled bodies around the feet of those who still stood. The mass of fur and loose armour grew thinner, leaving more and more visible those who better endured the brutal winnowing of battle. The genewrought hulks and cybernetic miscreations birthed by the priest-king’s troves of ancient machinery waded indifferently through the sanguine sludge, their looming figures more compact, mace-fists and electrified claws crushing metal and shredding flesh.

A rhythm of voices rose through the cacophony of screams, blows and roaring weaponry. It was not that it sounded louder than all of them, rising over the infernal storm with impossible force. It was but a rhythmic, guttural chant of a few throats, something that should by all rights have been lost in the deafening violence. Yet it persistently droned into every ear, as though the mouths from which it issued had been over the shoulder of each and every combatant, singing their litany to them and them alone. The words were strange to the Imperials, indecipherable even to those passingly familiar with the speech of the northern tribe, but they were heavy with an unmistakable sense of omen, of ponderous menace. The warriors of Maulland Sen seemed heartened by it, and their eyes were large and vitreous with focus.

Behind their straining lines came the source of the chant. A group of shapes no taller than men walked slowly among the hastening reinforcements, untouched by them as a rock by parting water. Long and shapeless robes of crude grey sackcloth covered them from their hooded heads to their feet, unseen below the ends of tattered fabric. Only their hands were visible, crooked and wrinkled, holding long staves of wood and bone almost like banners. The unclean radiance that flickered over the northmen’s heads coruscated and danced on the ends of those staves and the talismans hung from them, sparks and corpse-candles slithering and chasing each other in a kaleidoscopic game that was painful to the eyes. It seemed to shine brighter, gaining in intensity, and yet it did not shed more light nor cast deeper shadows from the bodies around; motes of luminance scattered like disturbed insects before falling to the ground, into the bloodied snow, the ragged skin and broken bones…

A cry of alarm went up from somewhere. A churning noise gurgled from the ground. There was motion below, beyond the shifting trample of feet. A crushed hand twitched; a dismembered jaw gaped and snapped shut. With the creeping steadiness of a nightmare, impelled by swarming sparks of indescribable colours, life returned to those who had been torn away from it. Dead fingers grasped for the legs above them, mounds of oozing flesh coiled and slithered, their horrid weight as dangerous as quicksand. The entire mass of the mangled dead was stirring into horrific animation, a vast amorphous terror that groped in blind and indiscriminate vengeance. Lines wavered as men were dragged down by resurgent carcasses, bloody mulch crawling down noses and throats with a perverse will. Screams mounted. The chant was ubiquitous, oppressive.

As the decrepit song spread, so too did the notice of the Sentinels who had measured their pace and slowed their advance. As the dead began to rise, many of them saw them now surrounded by the dead, grasping and scratching at powered armour. Shots rang, swords slashed, death was continually delivered and brought back. It was not until an order rang amongst the vox that the Sentinel’s orders would change, “The dead rise, brothers! Move to protect the auxilia, by the Emperor’s will cast these abominations back to the grave! First Company with me, strike down the rapturous! Show them Steel!”

The cohorts of the Sentinels broke to fall back to the auxilia, many having to hack and slash their way through the dead and the dying that dared impede them. They rampaged like men possessed to get back to their unaugmented forces, knowing only but their duty to protect humanity from the horrors that their enemy now brought to them. Chainswords swept, volkite flared, death reigned. Even when they had made it back to the auxilia it had become a free-for-all as men fought desperately to survive. Undead attempted to climb aboard a stuck tank, but Sentinels moved quickly to dislodge them before helping the trapped crew evacuate.

Arturas’s command company, numbering only fifty strong, rammed through the enemy hordes, hacking and slashing their way to the enemy wizards with all due haste - stepping upon the dead and crushing them before they could rise once more. His power sword cleaved through his foes with little effort and his shield caught the blade of any gene-warrior brave enough to face him. He moved through the swarm like a butcher through a slaughterhouse, all with his eyes laid upon a grand prize - for his honour compel him to seek out the head of the snake.

The auxilia of the Fifteenth was at first nearly overwhelmed as the dead began to rise around them. Formless, shapeless horrors claws at their limbs and their armor, pulling weapons and their wielders down into the sucking morass that now roiled and thrashed about them as a primordial sea of fury and hate. Devoid of the strength of an Astartes, they hacked at the grasping limbs and gnashing teeth with sword and bayonet. Bursts of automatic weapons fire tore fresh gashes in the flesh of the undead. Bright gouts of flame immolated whole swathes of the battlefield as incendiary grenades and flamers belched forth their deadly payload. 

The formation seemed near to breaking as its soldiers warred with the dead under their feet. One man was dragged into the swirling morass as cold fingers pried at his armor, pulling his weapon away from him. The weak light of the arctic sun seemed to fade away underneath a writhing mass of flesh.

And then an armored hand reached through, silver and lavender plating jarringly at odds with the nightmarish morass. With a single mighty sweep of the hand the moving corpses were sent flying, limbs and viscera scattering away as the armored bulk of a Siren pulled him from the dark, pressing a rifle from one of the fallen into his hands. “To arms, soldier. Your duty to the Emperor is not over yet!” She bellowed, her sword cutting a wide swathe through the corpses as she fought her way to another entrapped trooper. “The enemies of tomorrow cannot stand against the sons and daughters of the Achaemenid Empire, do your duty soldiers!”

Abruptly, light flowed over the combatants, living and non-dead, from the western edge of the battle, as if a second aureous sun had suddenly risen to illuminate what ancient Sol could not reach through the leaden northern clouds. There was a sound as of thunder, and the ground quaked. The tribesmen bearing down from the Nordyc’s right flank were swept from their feet, and for the first time seemed to hesitate, dread dawning through the furor in their eyes. Even the sorcerers’ chant faltered. The stirring dead grew sluggish, grasping limbs weakening their grip.

A great cheer went up from the ranks of the Steel Lords, for they were the first to see - their Master was with them, and his advent had staggered the abominable horde. With redoubled vigour they trampled over the twitching charnel, gleefully mulching flesh and bone underfoot. Like a vast pincer of crude metal, their two wings began to close, crushing the faltering resistance in their path and sealing the heart of the enemy between them.

Near that core, the warriors of the Ninth Legion moved likewise. The masses of corpses given impious life had bogged down the manoeuvers that animated their plan of battle, and in the face of the sorcerous onslaught they could do little more than hunker down with bilious obstinacy, bleeding and clinging to the ground they had gained with tooth and nail. Now, however, they tore themselves free of the bloody preternatural hydra, and a thousand chainblades roared their defiance.

“He watches us!” Skorr’s voice barked through the vox. The golden gleam on his helmet was a reflecting flame that moved towards the head of his cohorts. “Forward the flamers! Blade-brothers, flense them!”

The slate-armoured giants surged, their frontline fracturing into groups of two and three which dispersed to engage the remaining gene-hulks and cyberhorrors of Nordyc, hacking into them one by one with the remorseless coordination of born head-hunters. From behind them advanced legionaries laden with harnesses and nests of tubes, and their weapons spat rivers of incinerating flame, sparing neither the living nor the fallen. A rhythmic murmur drifted from below their visors, inaudible to any in the din of battle but the sharpest of superhuman ears.

“We will sweep the way. Cut down the witch-spawn!” the Legion Master’s whistle coursed through the Astartes’ vox. A grotesque amalgam of iron and skin reared over him and he spoke, four arms poised to strike; he did not flinch as one of his brothers leapt forward and hewed the monster in twain with a single swing of the tremendous chainaxe held in his bionic claws.

A voice crackled to life over the vox, “And that we shall. Forward, sisters, strike them down!”

From Skylance gunships loitering in the rear, the Sirens burst forth onto the awaiting enemy. Vapor contrails trailed behind rockets launched from wing pods as squadrons of the craft soared out from the cold skies. The volunteers in the frontline cheered their war cry, and those few among their ranks who possessed psychic abilities now unleashed them to their fullest. Great gouts of flame and ribbons of unearthly lightning erupted from the Imperial line. Whole columns of the warriors of Maullen Sen were slain where they stood, burned and shocked to the bone. The auxilia and warriors of the Fifteenth surged forward now in tandem with the long awaited strike of their Legion. Explosions ripped through the teeming masses of the enemy soldiers as rockets slamming in around them. 

As the Fifteenth’s Auxilia pushed forward, the gunships swooped low over the enemy, disgorging the resplendent silver and lavender armored forms of the Sirens of Terra into the heart of the enemy formation. A Sister leapt from the craft, coming down with a thundering crash onto the unfortunate forms of three of the enemy warriors, the gleaming sword staff in her hands crackling with golden energy. She raised it to the sky, and a bolt of lighting crashed down upon its tip, fanning out in all directions and racing through dozens, hundreds of the enemy around her. Another raised a staff topped with the Imperial eagle, bright bursts of flame immolating all who stood before her. The strike force grew in size and ferocity as the last complement of Astartes crashed into the enemy throng, ripping and tearing a bloody swathe through the hordes of the north. 

At their head the Sirens’ Legion Master, Princess Pantea herself, held a gleaming sword in one hand as she crashed down amidst the thickest of the enemy horde, near the strange figures whose sorceries had awakened the dead. A great column of flame appeared in her hand as she hacked and incinerated the throngs of the enemy soldiers, leading the charge toward the center of the enemy army. The sorceries of the witches of Maulland Sen met their match as the psychic warriors drawn from the Achaemenid Empire unleashed the full fury of their warp-spawned might. 

The arrival of the Fifteenth seemed to send a physical shockwave through what remained of the enemy army as they were thrown back or carved apart both by sword and volkite as by terrifying psychic wrath. The weakening numbers of the Maulland Sen armies fell apart around the concerted strike of the Fifteenth as they carved through them with ease. The armored spearhead of Astartes continued to cut and blast their way to the center, eager to cut off the many heads of the snake that was the enemy army. The legion master herself was the first to arrive, breaking into the circle of calm that surrounded the witches of the enemy army. The withered forms raised their hands in defense, conjuring forth eldritch tongues of warp-flame that blasted against the ceramite armor of the Sirens. 

The snow around them melted away and the earth beneath it first thawed, then it too melted to glass and stone beneath the fury of the onslaught. The Sirens’ own powers flared as they threw forth wards and shields, sparing them and the thunder warriors they fought alongside from the heat of the foul magicks of the northmen. More of them converged in a flanking maneuver, bearing swords, volkites, and yet more sorceries of their own as they lay into the witches of the north from behind. A sword burst through the back of one - and in that instant the spell shattered, the devastating column of flame dissipating against the swirling vortex of imperial flame that shielded the legion from the effects of the blast. The warriors of the fifteenth charged through, warp-lightning and swords putting an end at last to the vile sorceries of Maulland Sen - at least for now.

With its unclean heart excised, the horde crumbled. Now unhampered by preternatural obstacles, the Imperial lines swept over the more and more thin and sparse pockets of Nordyc resistance. Even the savage northlanders saw now that no deliverance would come from their gods, while the awesome presence of the Lord of Hymalazia pressed as surely upon their spirit as his forces did on their ranks. They broke then, throwing down their weapons with cries of dismay and fleeing for the dubious safety of their shattered redoubts, only those fully lost to the berserkergang standing their ground in frothing rage before being struck down. The lumbering horrors they had unleashed were cut to pieces where they stood, crashing to the earth in mounds of tangled wire and viscera. The Steel Lords’ raucous cries of triumph filled the air as bolter fusillades scythed down the retreating foes.

The first blow had been struck, and the icy outer shell of Maulland Sen had cracked.

[hr]

The air after the battle was eerily quiet. Even the wind seemed to have subsided, as though nature itself, or what remained of it on ailing Terra, had been cowed by the stupendous forces that had raged beneath the ever-wintry sky. A pall of silence had replaced its dirge, as heavy as the tainted clouds overhead, neither flesh nor metal raising a distinct voice as auxilia busied themselves extricating their feet from mulched flesh and clearing fractured bone from the tracks of their vehicles.

This quiet was due in no little part to the Legio Cataegis’ absence. Inflamed by seemingly boundless furious energy and with nary a thought for a celebration that must have seemed to them premature, the Steel Lords had rumbled onwards as tempestuously as their namesake in pursuit of the withdrawing remnants of the Nordyc horde. Their Primarch had spared but a glance and a scoff through scarred lips for those who would rest while something remained that could be slain, then set off to join his brother warriors, spurring them on with vicious jeers. The coarse laughter that answered him had been the last to fade into the bleak plains.

The ever stoic soldiery of the Steel Sentinels had collectively met the Primarch’s gaze, their eyes focused as they awaited word to continue their own advance from Arturas’. Yet, they would not be setting themselves loose immediately, for Arturas stalked amongst the field of corpses, his metallic boots crunching bone and flesh with each step with little thought to them. There was silence amongst the field still, though not for long as the master approached that of the fifteenth. He spoke to her with an eerie humour, “You stole the honour of my kill against the witches, I was nearly within sword-length of their putrid guard.”

Princess Pantea raised the visor on her helmet, sable eyes shimmering with a fleeting wisp of golden energy. “Is that so, honored master of the nineteenth?” She asked, smiling, “My vision must have been obscured by the chaff you busied yourself with. I will be sure to save you the honor of the next kill against such a leader.” She laughed, sheathing her sword and closing the remaining distance between them, extending a hand. “All that said, you made your mark known in your own way, and you and your Legion’s actions saved many of my Auxilia and the mortal forces we serve alongside. Because of you they live to serve the Emperor another day, and there is no greater honor than that in my eyes. You have my thanks.” She turned, scanning the horizon, “And where are the warriors of the Ninth? They too are deserving of honor for their part in this battle.”

A flash of pale light over gold preceded the answer.

“Do not fear for your laurels,” Skorr said genially as he approached. His armour was spattered with red and unclean black, but seemed unscored. He stopped some paces away. “We need no honor other than victory, and that our Lord witness us.”

Nyrid came some distance at his shoulder, metal carapace scarred and encrusted like a butcher's cutting-table. In his hands he held the giant skull of an augmented hulk, and crudely flayed it with strokes of his combat knife. Once little remained of skin and muscle, he tore away the jaw and carefully snapped the underside, then scooped out the viscous brain matter within.

“Witness us he does,” he spoke in a grave voice as he raised the hollowed skull over his head and laid it upon his helmet. Bloody rivulets ran down the edge of his visor and dripped onto the breastplate. Pale eye-lenses looked out through the sockets.

Behind the two, those of their brothers not busied with tallying the dead sifted through the masses of fallen enemies, fishing out overgrown and blackened bones. Some cut at the bodies with short blades. Other daubed their hands in blood and ash to draw sigils upon their chests, shoulders, faces.

Arturas’ eyes narrowed behind his visor at the display, being reminded only of the superstitious rituals that they now fought to replace with Truth. Yet, he would not dismiss the culture of fellow Astartes for he knew not where they hailed from and what strange traditions they had been steeped in. The legion master of the Nineteenth spoke softly towards his strange cousin, “I am sure our master watches our victory. That said, I suspect you and your men are collecting trophies after a well-fought first battle?”

“Spoil-taking is the way of our forebears, and we would not see that link severed,” Skorr nodded, “Pride, tradition, belonging, such things strengthen a warrior's spirit. They are the cold that tempers after the forge of battle. If this little tribute to barbarism is the price to pay, so be it.” He gave a toneless laugh, then his voice became solemn. “But there is more to this. The Emperor has placed great trust in us despite our troubled birth. We will make it so that whenever he looks upon us, he shall see that we are true to his design. The death and the fear of his enemies are our mantle, and the ashes of their works our warpaint. Is the prize of our deeds in his name not as fine a sign of fealty as the Raptor itself?” With that playful question, the cheer returned to his words.

The Master of the Nineteenth was silent but for a moment, contemplating the words in a fraction of a second before giving a silent nod. The Sentinel rested his hand on the pommel of his blade as he took a more relaxed stance with Skorr’s words reverberating in his mind. “Aye. I suppose so. Forgive me, I meant not to question your loyalty to our Lord and the Raptor.” The Astartes bowed to his kin for a moment. With his apology out of the way, Arturas inquired to both the Master’s, “What is our next move? I do believe the Steel Lords hunt for more adequate prey. They may even be upon the city proper soon enough.”

“Perhaps, we should make for the spires. Make this execution swift and spare the non-combatants of a sacking by the Thunder Warriors,” Arturas suggested, looking to the Pantea for affirmation on the plan.

The master of the fifteenth silently raised an eyebrow at the Ninth’s customs, though said nothing of any negative opinions she might have held. Instead she nodded to him, “Connection to tradition is part of what binds us to our humanity.” She said, “And none can deny your commitment to the Emperor’s vision and will. Let our enemies tremble before the signs of what awaits those who stand in the way of progress.”

She looked towards their ultimate destination, watching as the Thunder Warriors grew smaller and smaller in the distance. “I would second this plan. Cut off the head of the snake and spare the people the wrath of those brutes. Too many lands have been brought into this Imperium as naught but blackened ash and charred bone.”

Ahead, the darkening skies of Nordyc loomed as a grim promise.