Scrawl Banditta
Not a Sayan
MjolnirUrsh: The Dagger
In ages long past the capital of what had become the barbarian confederacy of Ursh had been fed by a river, the long forgotten dream of drinkable surface water flowing into a community of untainted humanity. That dream was long dead, and all that remained of the river was steep blasted cliffs, a chasm running into the heart of the citadel that had been a city.
It was an obvious point of ingress and the enemy knew that too, the terrain around the valley had been blasted flat and festooned with defensive emplacements, while the walls of the valley bristled with horror ready to descend upon any that dared the journey.
Perhaps in challenge, the Imperium had answered.
Bombardment of epic scale had given the forces of the Emperor the ability to approach, to prepare their own positions across the blasted wasteland around the valley, holding the enemy in place while hardier, more mobile, forces prepared to risk the gauntlet of the valley. A blade right to the heart of the Ursh citadel if they would succeed, a death of nightmares in failure.
The forces of Ursh, encamped in trenches, dugouts, and shielded fortifications running the length of the valley wall, were well prepared to weather conventional bombardment by even the most ferocious of artillery fire. They were not granted the opportunity to demonstrate their resilience. Basilisks of the XXI Astartes Legion, behind the cover of other Imperial Forces were deployed, and began to saturate the trenchlines of the valley walls with what was quickly becoming the reputed principle tactical armament of choice for the irregular Legion - specialized chaff artillery. The defender’s lines were saturated with suffocating silvery fog that disrupted auspex and vox in turn, leaving the entire length of the defenses in disarray, unable to see or call out in alarm.
The defenders were not so helpless as most opponents, however. Armed with enigmatic and terrifying weapons from the height of the Dark Age of Technology, they opened fire, blindly, and saturated the already flattened approach to their lines with mortars that unleashed devastating chemical weaponry upon the land; already calibrated and zeroed in to allow for perfect area denial in spite of the crews manning them having been rendered blind. Humming, energetic area-denial emplacements crackled with invisible energies, reducing anybody caught in their cones of effect to heaps of steaming, flash-vaporized meat and metal. Slavering mutant hounds infused with the howling energies and denizens of the Warp prowled the lengths of the trenches, undeterred by the loss of vision - for they did not need eyes to see. They called out warnings along the lines and jumped up onto the trenchtops as the Astartes of the XXI approached through the fires and seething hazards of the approach, many of them falling even as they reached the trenchlines - but the survivors bent to their grim purpose, adapted to mastery of the environment they had prepared with their bombardment. With storm bolters, auto-launchers, and specially crafted melee claw-blades, they crested the ridge of the trenches and rained hellish mayhem down upon their trapped and ambling enemies - able to see each other and their foes with perfect clarity even as the defenders flailed and died blindly in their pit.
The conflict was not quite so one-sided as the XXI would have preferred. As the defending trenchlines began to break, individual section leaders saw to the deployment of their most fearsome weapons before they were cut down. Large, trench-clearing leveler machines, bristling with servo arms, faced with screaming drill-pieces, and spewing noxious chemical fumes that flooded the trenches even further, stirred to life and began to take to pieces anything that dared stand before them - both their own supposed allies, as well as the marines of the XXI.
The Astartes served their purpose as they fought on however - fully occupying and deteriorating the defenders in their trenches, the billowing silvery mist from their chaff munitions spreading over the course of the battle, licks of it blowing along the ground and over the edge of the valley sides. Not enough to spill down into the valley proper, but enough to signal the efforts of the XXI and indicate that the enemy was being met and occupied. Below, the thrust of the Imperium’s attack along the valley floor began in earnest - the dagger thrust.
That blade was the greatest that the Imperium could offer, born from centuries of war and drowned in tempests of blood. They had been there from the start, propelling the Master of the Lines from His enclave in the Himalazians down into the blood-soaked hills of Akkad and across the apocalyptic wastes of Terra. They were born for war, made greater by war, and created to die in war. They were forged with lightning strikes from a brewing tempest. They were born from the ingenious mind of Humanity’s greatest conqueror. They were guided through the conviction, will, and strength of their Master. Their footsteps were the rumble of thunder on a dry plain. Their voices were the crescendo of fulguration. Their will was as indomitable as their souls were pure. Their might was unparalleled, even in the face of Mankind’s oldest monstrosities. Their ferocity was the demise of Terra’s scattered arch-tyrants and cynical hierophants. Their strength cleaved the likes of fleshborn nightmares of titanic proportion.
Thunder Warriors.
A thousand of them strode the blasted rock of the desecrated, shattered valley as if they were thunder itself. Their banners were raised high, each bearing symbols from each of the twenty Legiones Cataegis that conquered all of Terra. They sprinted into the fray with screams on their lips, garbed in the best that the Imperium could offer in their dying throes. The vaults of Himalazia had been opened to them to conquer their last and greatest foe. Shields, old and new, crackled as autocannons and heavy stubbers ceaselessly pelted their great host. Disintegrators, vortex cannons, and magrails unraveled those in the valley. Blades and lances of plasma pierced carapace and shield alike as they descended on the Urshic hordes that awaited them.
None could tell that there was strategy amongst them. Each bore heraldry vastly different from the next, yet each proudly held the Raptor on their chestplate and pauldron. Armored, mechanized machines of flesh locked in steel trudged alongside them, spraying death across the valley from ill-fitted heavy weapons that replaced arms. Great warmachines, akin to the Imperialis Praetoros of the God-Slayers, viciously raced to meet Urshic vehicles that awaited them. The host was everything and all that the Legio Cataegis could offer; nothing was spared from the final task given to them by the Emperor.
At the forefront, the God-Slayers led the way as living legends given form. Fifty was their number. Fifty bore equipment specialized to handle the task before them. They were midnight clad in great suits of heavy ceramite-plasteel composite that rivaled the technobarbarian warlords of the early years. Their helmets were knightly raiments with piercing, crimson glares. Cloaks of alabaster white billowed behind them as their kinetic fields flashed with prismatic light. They bore the weapons of fallen tyrants in one hand and the apocalyptic deathspitters of the Dark Age in the other. Their path was drenched in Urshic blood, caked in the splattered bodies of Kalagann’s followers. They led the way forward.
Primarch Aeternus swung Apocrypha to his right, slicing into a vityaz that had raised their blasphemous axe to defend himself. In the last second before contact, Rex activated the plasmafield and cut through the enemy’s weapon with disgusting ease. He snapped his wrist left, unloading Ea into a group of raiders charging into a formation of Steel Lords. Each of their number exploded into viscera as the bolts connected with pierced flesh. The Emperor’s Blade shouldered his way into the next group of Urshites as explosions and bullets surrounded him. For every enemy that he could not personally slay, any number of the Cataegis died. Every enemy that laid before him, slain by his black blade, was replaced with another that dared to fight back. Their numbers were ceaseless, some were clearly born from Mosvoroth and others as slave-warriors from other techno-barbarian states. He killed them all the same.
A spare glance at his auspex confirmed that they had pushed no further than a third of the way into the valley. Dozens of voices gave their reports over the vox. Some were from Cataegis that were coherent enough to retain their mental faculties. Others were from the Thunder Warriors that were quickly devolving into things that simply fought and died without concern. He had been forced to tune his vox to the command net, linked to the various Thunder Primarchs and their praetors. Regardless of their cognitive resilience, they all said the same thing. They were dying faster than they could charge and the Urshites were filling in from everywhere. Artillery pounded the valley walls, yet they continued to reinforce where they died.
The enthusiastic roar of Alexamandes drew his attention as the Primarch flung himself into a group of vukodlak. Their flesh-metal claws tried to claw into the Infernal Phoenix to no avail, his greataxe cutting into them faster than they could respond. The warriors of his legion followed shortly after, recklessly plunging into the abyss as they died. Coherency amongst the Legio Cataegis was pointless. Too many had lost their minds already. Only a handful of the Thunder Primarchs and their legion were aware enough to execute combat doctrine. He was thankful that the God-Slayers led from the front, guiding those who had lost themselves to the flaws.
He raised his boot and caved in the chest of an Urshic gunman, stepping back down onto his skull to ensure that their corpse wouldn’t reanimate. Aeternus felt every inch of strain in the warsuit as he pushed it forward on unfamiliar limbs. The fibre-bundle muscles of the armor were a mess, yet each movement, regardless of input, saw his enemy flee or die. It was a boon and a burden. Tyrant Armor. The heaviest plating available to the Cataegis, scavenged and repurposed from the deities they had slain across Terra. It was fitting to use the refitted armor and weapons of the technobarbarian warlords to slay the last tyrant.
“Push onward! Glory to the Emperor! Glory to the Imperium! Raptor Imperialis!” Aeternus roared out through his helmet. He raised the banner of the Imperium in his left hand and slammed it down where he stood. Hundreds of voices joined him in their own indistinct cries for their Emperor or Unity. Warriors that had lost themselves to the flaw recovered as the Raptor Imperialis flew over them. They pushed on in their uncertain state, killing and slaying Urshites where they could.
+’We must break the stalemate. Rally to the banner and push!’+ His voice broke through the voxnet, clear and proud as a lion’s roar. If he could not force a breakthrough with the God-Slayers alone, then the combined weight of the Thunder Primarchs would shatter their armor like glass.
+’All that plate, and you’re still too light?’+ Ushotan’s sneer carried through the vox, but Aeternus could have seen it himself had he but a moment to glance back. The Steel Lords held close behind the God-Slayers’ shoulder, a grim monolith of grey metal that caught what was shattered by the speartip and ground it ruthlessly underfoot. Very few of them now remained, a pitiful shadow of the unbreakable phalanx that had once ground Maulland Sen to dust, but each was a veteran of a hundred sieges, a blooded slayer of witches and daemons, and this battle was their element. Perhaps it was that, or merely their legendary stubbornness, but none of them was yet clouded by bloodlust, their squared ranks as firm and close as they had ever been.
The grey-clad Primarch bellowed an order, and like sliding plates of armour the Fourth Cataegis rearranged themselves, forming a marching line before the flag. A fusillade of bolter fire brought low a flock of skeletal gargoyles that had once been men, tearing the fiends out of the grimy sky as they sought to sweep down on the Thunder Warriors’ loose flank. Waves of the dead and the plagued rose to crash into them, the sheer mass of flesh dragging steelclad giants to the ground, but still they grimly held, their deaths buying time for their brethren to assemble.
Aeternus’ rallying cry had come at a providential moment for one of those selfsame scattered wings. There the Red Knights had broken away from the charge in an ill-advised rush, their sight by now misted over with crimson to match their armour. A pack of wily long-toothed oupires had baited them close to the withered riverbank with the temptation of cutting open their blood-swollen bellies, and thus they had strayed into the fire of infernal cannons above. The last of Charmagnol’s lot would have heedlessly perished under the blasts of tainted flame, had the call not snapped their eyes back to the center - and there their old rivals the Annihilators, converging to it from the other end in a feral rush. Where sanity had yielded, enmity won over, and unwilling to be beaten to any prize by Jotharion the Knights turned to rejoin the heart of the fight.
Whereas the frenzied howls and charges of the final Cataegis strewn about the valley, there came a calculated and deliberate movement through the blasted No-man’s Land that had become the valley. The dogs of war had been loosed from their leashes in a maddening final battle, yet there came the forces that brought order to the battlefield. The Steel Sentinels strode forward, operating nothing more than as a reserve force as the tumultuous battles of Ursh had whittled their numbers low. Where the Red Knights had run forwards in a final blood frenzy, the Sentinels came to restore order. Shields were activated, swords flashed as they cleaved through those that the Categis did not, offering a secure rear so that the Thunder Warriors would not be wasted in an encirclement.
Volkite fusilades blared as they stepped slowly and methodically behind those final sources, footholds were secured by their presence, and ground would not be given should the Categis meet their end. Arturas stabbed his sword into the heart of a wyrd, struggling to claw back towards the fight, his entrails spilling as the astartes brought his sword up. He looked to his left to meet the gaze of a Gallahad, speaking, “The Categis push hard, too hard. They risk encirclement the more they lose themselves.”
“Shall I request the Black Hawk to restore order?”
There was a swift response to the question, “No.”
A vox blared as Arturas spoke to Aeturnus, not concerning himself with those who were too lost in the blindness of battle. ‘+ Lord Aeternus, the Categis are at risk of encirclement. We are attempting to secure your rear; be cognizant of this. +’
The vox warbled, a new voice, sanity fraying in the edges of the tinny vox feedback, responded before even Aeternus could, ‘+ Lord Aeternus is aware, we are all aware, runt. My forces push the ridge; the toll is heavy. We push the ridge. +’ the vox cut out
Apocalypsos, his duel-wielded axes thick with blood and unidentifiable ichor, pressed forward on Aeternus’ flank. His men slaughtered all that stood before them, silent rage propelling them to their final glorious deaths as surely as it brought the end of any Urshiite standing before them.
Apocalypsos had seen it first, a gap in the defenses, a stretch of emplacements and trenches where the heads of the defenders numbered just a few less per squad than elsewhere. As much as he found the Astartes loathsome, he could not deny the effectiveness of the suicidal assault taking place at the lip of the ridge. The XXI, for all their worth, were thinning the herd.
‘+ Aeternus, my men break their flank, +’ he voxxed, conveniently leaving out the role the Astartes above were playing in this act, ‘+ Expect opportunity for a breakthrough shortly, Raptor Imperialis. +’ The vox dropped dead as the Primarch of the XVII Legio Cataegis let himself be lost in the bloodshed and smoke of war.
The fighting in the valley grew into a new crescendo of violence. Aeternus could feel the thrum of malevolent power, motorized engines, and the screaming of men and women as if it pounded against his soul. He knew that further afield of the valley was a greater war being won by the Emperor. The battle in front of him, however, was all that he needed to win. Win and survive, he thought grimly as the Cataegis began to reform a coherent line. Fresh vigor filled his lungs as the Legiones conformed to his will.
The western flank reformed as Charmagnol and Jotharion reeled in their Red Knights and Annihilators respectively. Napoleos and his Dawnhunters anchored themselves into the leftmost approach, their spears rallying the Nineteenth and Fifth Legiones back into fighting form. Aeternus was thankful that the regrouping was possible with the assistance of Corvinius and Sunxian on the opposite ridges of Apocalypsos. How many had already died for the ridgeward Cataegis to claim their advantage? It was a thought quickly expelled as the eastern flank returned to fighting form.
Alfovathan and Gilgamenses torched the earth with their combined strength to recuperate, aided significantly by Apocalypsos’ contributions above them. The Umbra Paladins and the Amethyst Tridents pushed the rightmost wing as a single unit. The former echoing the Steel Sentinel’s sword-and-shield tactics, while the latter cautiously used their disciplined polearms and long-range armaments to pound into the Urshic menace. No doubt their advance would’ve faltered were it not for the leaderless legions that blended into their number.
The Radiant Spears, Raptor’s Claws, Titan Scythes, Ashen Marauders, Cobalt Phantoms, and Storm Blades reinforced what remained of their legions. Without their own Primarch to guide them, Aeternus knew they were significantly less effective even with their praetor replacements. It was a fact that was evident in the way they spilled their own blood on Urshic blades or willingly sacrificed themselves to push the advance a single inch. Their valiant sacrifice would be forever remembered to him.
Primarch Bodiciia pulled herself back from the slaughter, her Verdant Raiders now falling into line with the center of the Cataegis Blade. Urshic ichor of varying hues drenched her armor, while fresh wounds weeped Imperial blood from her limbs. The Nightbringers fell in with the Second Legion, Aeternus had no doubt that Theaddon still lived and remained close to what remained of his Thunder Warriors. As Ushotan and the Steel Lords found their ground around him, Rex spared a glance at the auspex one final time. He grit his teeth in frustration. The Infernal Phoenixes and Caged Dogs were far ahead of the advance, lost to their geneflaw or drawn into bloodlust. The Primarch of the First could waste no more time on them.
+’Advance!’+
The continued barrage from the XXI, support from the rearward Imperial Army, and the ridgeward advance from the Cataegis allowed their movement. Aeterneus Rex hefted the banner in his left hand, raising it up into the sky to signal the continuation of the attack. Few and far were the times that the Cataegis ever moved as a single unit. This became one of those times as the Thunder Warriors simultaneously pushed forward with bolter and chainsword. The lumbering dreadnoughts, formidable and slow, lunged into the valley with reckless abandon. The heavy bark of Imperial tanks resounded behind the march, breaking apart mutants and mortals for their continued aggression.
Every step that the Imperials took was a titanic effort. The uneven grounds of the valley were quickly filling with the shattered bodies of the Thunder Warriors, eviscerated carcasses of the slave-mutants, and the remains of Kalagann’s preternatural monsters. The Cataegis, however, were making progress beyond the scope of possibility. Groups of Urshites died for every one Imperial laid low. Sorcerers were crushed by fist and fury. Monstrosities were torn apart by frenzying genewarriors, lost to the geneflaw born to them by the Emperor.
Primarch Aeternus could feel the strain on his mind as he fought from the forefront. His attention was divided a hundredfold between the various Cataegis Legions, the fighting in his immediate vicinity, and the plethora of chronometers screaming in his ear. Perhaps it would’ve been better to command from the rear, guiding his warriors like the Emperor had once upon a time. He refused. He would fight, command, and win from the front. There was no realm where he would accept leading from a comfortable position.
A body flew past him. One of the many Infernal Phoenixes’ who lost their mind, floundered into the backlines of their advance. He didn’t have the time to register it. His attention was affixed to the beings that barred their way past the middle of the valley. The first of many tribulations that would come to meet them. The first of Kalagann’s titanic monstrosities that dared to rear its ugly maw at the Emperor’s vanguard. Where the unwashed masses of arisen corpses, half-bestial slave-warriors, and low-ranking vityaz had battered against the mass of the Cataegis, the true might of Ursh awaited them.
A vast line of unholy creatures with cannons strapped to their back launched wyrd ammunition into the Cataegis. Vityaz with powered armor glowing with the corruption of their unsaid gods patiently waited, guarding the instruments of their God-King against the Imperial advance. Lumbering far and above them, a trio of titanic creatures reminiscent of the Urshic migou waited with their toothy maws splayed open. Warplating was haphazardly bolted to various portions of the creatures’ flesh. As if they needed to be protected from conventional weapons, Aeternus thought grimly.
+’XXI, bring down the wrath of the Emperor on those creatures. Apocalypsos, Corvinius, Sunxian. Butcher the ridges and buy us the advance with blade and bolter. Spread the line and push to the beasts!’+ Aeternus commanded with a roar, affixing the auspex with new telemetry. Fresh battle lines were drawn across the map from tacticians and vox-operators far behind the advance.
“Arturas! Theaddon!” the Primarch of the First yelled, passing off the banner to a nearby Steel Lord. Aeternus began to sprint, charging through a group of dredges and flattening them into pink mist. He had a small window to act in the moments following the Astartes’ artillery barrage. Rex needed to reach the center as the first shells began to pelt the creatures or the advance would flounder. As if notifying the sudden aggression from their commander, the heavily armored God-Slayers started to push the line.
+’Received, Primarch.’+ Came the punctual response from one of the XXI Legion’s Astartes Captains. +’Mechanized artillery repositioning now. Firing for effect in t-minus thirty seconds with standard high-explosive fragmentation shells. We are patching a spotting vox frequency to you and your elements; our Basilisks have an allotment of hunter-killer missiles ready to fire at your designation. Make free use of them.’+
There was a momentary break in the vox signal as the thunder warriors arrayed for their charge - and then the signal came, accompanied by the shrill, keening, resonant hum of a multitude of Earthshaker shells raining down along a parabolic arc to fall straight down onto the assembled Urshic lines in a rolling, staggered wave of munitions, striking first at the titan creatures and the Vityaz vanguard before the curtain of fire drew back to hammer the beasts situated in the rear with their wyrd-cannons.
+’We now greet the enemy with the closed fist of the Emperor’s Contempt.’+
The first wave of shells stabbed into the earth, several slicing directly into the backs of the titanic monstrosities and other landing adjacent to or amongst the Vityaz vanguards. Plumes of explosive flames specked with piercing shrapnel surged like the tide itself, the Thunder Warriors charging towards a wall of flame and death. As the fires began to recede, the damage became evident - Each shell left an impact crater between eight and fifteen meters in diameter, many of them overlapping substantially, the floor of the ravine having been pounded flat in many places by the amassed bombardment. The Vityaz forces had been scattered - the corrupted forces empowering them had prevented many of them from succumbing even to the immense force of the bombardment strikes, but even though could not withstand the raw force that had tossed them about like dolls and upheaved the very earth beneath their feet, disrupting their fortifications and lines. The Earthshaker cannons had lived up to their name, and the Urshic vanguard was left in disarray.
Mortal men died as the XXIst swept the trenches of all life. Methodical and smooth, the Astartes snuffed out every bastion of resistance, every pocket of heroic last stands was met with disgrace at the end of Imperial bolter and blade, and every attempted withdrawal was slaughtered as they broke from the cover of their trenches and dugouts to find shelter in a more rearward line. The squads of the XXIst, their senses enhanced by their armor systems able to cut through the dense chaff they had laid in advance of themselves, moved inexorably toward victory.
Out beyond the trenchline, in the blasted land between the Emperor’s transhumans and mortals of Ursh, the damned moved in silence toward the Imperial advance. The systems of the XXIst, honed and tested to cut through the dense chaff, found no signs of the incoming raiders. Cloven hooves splashed through puddles of radwater and blood, wicked curved blades sliced through the smoke of battle, leaving fresh air in their wake as they ghosted toward the bleeding edge of the XXIst legion.
A bipedal, avian-headed, humanoid burst from the smoke and chaff in no-mans-land with a screech, its blade arcing out for a decapitating strike against a legionnaire, too slow. It was blasted back by a bolt round from another of the astartes’ squad, iridescent blue blood raining across the trench as the body simply disappeared into the mist. The only sign it had ever existed at all was the pungent smell of lapping oils and incense penetrating the filter systems of the Astartes armor.
With the first strike failed by the new Urshic raiders, the charge began in earnest. A cacophony of animalistic clicks, brays, and bird-like calls rang out from the smoke and chaff, dulled only slightly as the creatures barreled toward the Imperials, and hundreds of the beasts descended upon the XXIst’s forward squads as one.
It was then that the XXI’s lethal sweep through the trenchlines was stalled - and then driven back. The Astartes had prepared to create a battlefield of their choice; to blind and hamstring the enemy and to fight in an environment where the foe could not strike back - but these new creatures were bound by no earthly sensory limitations. They did not need eyes to see, noses to scent, tongues to taste, or flesh to feel. The Astartes, for all their plans, had partially blinded themselves - and when these new fiendish enemies fell upon them, their lines could not even call out to reorganize, the hideous haze of chaff rendering their own vox all but useless.
The marines of the XXI had trained for this form of scenario - and their squads began to make back in a fighting retreat, looking for their kin to form a stable battleline once more as they did so. Those squads who did not sense that the conflict had gone awry, who did not fall back swiftly enough, who could not find the line reforming behind them - were set upon and torn asunder by the Avian creatures.
The XXI suffered, then. But as they suffered, they continued to embattle the trenchlines surrounding the valley proper - whenever it seemed their wavering lines would be fully repulsed, the lines of Basilisks and Chimera that formed the backbone of their assault would scythe the Daemons down with volleys of rockets and heavy bolter fire - and time and time again, the Astartes drove the Daemons back into the glinting dagger mist of their chaff artillery to renew their prosecution in earnest. Charged by not only Primarch Aeternus, but by the decree of the Emperor himself, unfearing of death or loss, they held the ridge of the vale - even as the pitiless Daemons tore their uneven flanks and exposed squads to shreds.
The Steel Sentinels had continued their primary objective and ensured that the forces of the Cataegis did not fall to encirclement. Yet, with the surge the Thunder Warriors took at Aeturnus’ orders, those of the nineteenth legion could not stand idle. They were forced to advance rapidly, cutting down foes that did not die or were simply ignored by those maddened in blood frenzy. The small force of sentinels were cursed to begin spreading themselves to cover more of the valley proper. Each of them had to fight as two Astartes, none firing Volkite and hacking into the ranks of wyrds and abominations.
Arturas knew that he lacked the firepower to deal with the titanic threat that stalked the battlefield and merely needed to hope that the artillery of the XXI could fell them - or merely distract them. He and his first brothers, however, were not ones to shy away from a challenge for they had fought beside the God-Slayers before and they knew how to kill monsters. His retinue prepared what Melta-charges they carried.
The path forwards would be cleared with blood and sacrifice of need be. Those of the most senior of the legion surged forwards quickly embroiling themselves within the ranks of the Cataegis, killing and moving as quickly as their gene-crafted bodies allowed them. They forced themselves through, while the Cataegis gorged themselves on slaughter needing to move faster and faster than what their bodies could allow. Arturas could see the Primarch advancing, yet, he would not stop for him as unstoppable as Aeternus was in the sea of blood and gore.
“Forwards, brothers!” Arturas roared as his brothers sprinted through all they could, not stopping as rounds bounced off their armor or as explosives rocked against their shields, “Bring down the central-most titan! Designate the others for hunter-killer strikes!”
The Urshic line was shattered by the onslaught orchestrated by the XXI. Slave-warriors buckled under the reinvigorated assault of the Imperials. Vityaz desperately tried to rally through prayer and slaughter. Creatures of the Empyrean brayed and screamed in desperation to remain in the mortal realm. The Cataegis and the Astartes annihilated their way through the valley, butchering mortal and godbound alike in remorseless brutality. Unlike in the initial stages, the genewarriors of the Emperor did not suffer under the overwhelming bite of Kalagann’s horde. The valley rigids were contested, their daemonic allies killed, and their morale scattered to the wind.
As if smelling their victory, the Imperial line suddenly began to naturally shift into a three-pronged trident. The Primarch of the First led the center of the spear, Charmagnol on the left, and Gilgamenses on the right. There was no overt command to do so. The Cataegis simply did, executing orders unsung and massacring the enemy before them. The western ridge remained locked in a constant state of conflict, threatening to spill over into the valley with every passing second. The eastern ridge was pressed by the sudden appearance of monsters, though the XXI and Apocalypsos handled it with practised ease.
Each prong of the Imperial trident met with the wayward elements of the Infernal Phoenixes and the Caged Dogs, though they were heavily depleted and still fighting as recklessly as before. They fought faster, harder, and more manic than they had at the start of the fight. For every Cataegis of those legions lost in their geneflaw, the Urshic horde lost entire groups worth of combatants. Their butchery saw even the dead remain unrisen, cut to pieces with such brutality that they could not reanimate. By sheer luck, those that lost their mind hurled themselves into the enemy and not their allies.
Aeternus did not have time to account for the losses of the Tenth and Fifteenth, nor did he have time to figure out which Primarchs were still alive. He barely had time to register that Corvinius and Sunxian had yet to acknowledge his orders. His brain burned in a desperate attempt to keep track of everything while he butchered through a horde of Urshites. Out of the corner of his vision, Rex could see the indicators of his God-Slayers slowly tick down to forty-one of their original fifty. The Primarch, with his sense alone, could feel Ushotan, Theaddon, Arturas, and Bodiciia close to him. Every time he flicked his blade to the right, he could see Gilgamense’s flank fighting and dying. Every time he flicked Ea to the left, Charmagnol was ferociously tearing into the enemy. It was chaotic - yet it was manageable.
Briefly, he could make out the sound of Arturas’ call for hunter-killer strikes. He couldn’t have agreed more as he crashed through a vityaz, whose strength had left them in the artillery aftermath. Apocrypha, edged in crimson, cut through flesh and armor with disgusting ease - beyond what he thought was acceptable. Despite the thought, the Primarch didn’t hesitate to continue cutting them down. An auspex ping alerted him to the location of his last few surviving Captains - Nero - as they assisted leading the God-Slayers on the western flank. Another chime saw Tiberius coldly operating on the eastern flank. Each led ramshackle squads of the remaining First Legio, acting as rallying points and balls of utter annihilation. He was glad they still lived. Few would survive this encounter.
The center of the valley finally greeted his sight as the vityaz attempted to rally out of their battleshocked formation. It was too late for Kalagann’s knights. The thunder had come. He barreled into the first enemy with such herculean strength that their skeleton threatened to rip from their skin. Apocrypha licked out once to the right, slaughtering a pair attempting to flank him. Ea flicked out to the left, demolishing an Urshite with his fist and suppressing a cluster of encroaching migou. An avian creature attempted to ambush him. He headbutted it with his helmet, splattering the wyrd corvid into sulphur-scented ash. Every kill brought him closer to the titans.
Those horrible, abominable titans loomed overhead as he killed more and more of the vityaz. They were still reeling from the artillery, desperately waving their elongated limbs out in vain defense. The gargantuan on the western flank lashed out like a petulant child, slamming their claws into the valley floor to pulverize enemy and ally alike. An untold amount of Cataegis died in that one fit of rage, yet Aeternus couldn’t focus on it. The being in the center, slightly taller than the other two, was his target. He wasn’t alone in aiming for the beast. Bodiciia fought savagely to his immediate left with her axe, while Theaddon lashed out to his immediate right with his powersword. The staccato of bolterfire behind him warned of Ushotan and his Steel Lord’s closeness. The Primarch of the First rushed to the titan with Arturas close behind him.
“Ushotan! Handle the cannons!” Primarch Aeternus ordered. His voice was hoarse from screaming by this point, enough that he wasn’t sure if the command was heard. It mattered little. Those lumbering creatures with metal-flesh, humming cannons would die to one of his allies. Rex deliberately chose to ignore them, trusting in the skill and prowess of the Imperials around him.
+’Bring down His wrath!’+ The Primarch of the First roared over the vox. Their targeting solution had been acquired for several minutes already due to Arturas. All that was required of the XXI was a press of the button and the men to orchestrate another wave of devastation.
The order for the missile strikes went out. This time, there was no preceding vox affirmation or countdown from the XXI. The hunter-killer missiles launched from their chimeras were a breed apart from the earthshaker artillery they mounted. Using solid rocket fuel for propellant and with dedicated logis-engines and gyroscopic guidance, they combined power, agility, and speed that even a Thunder Warrior would have envied. Even launched straight up from the tops of their parent Chimeras, they were able to parabolically loop through the air, dive downwards into the valley, and strike their targets in under a second and a half.
The sight of it could only inspire awe in onlookers. In that second-and-a-half span, the nail-shaped munitions tore down from atop the vale like scathing claws, riding crowns of flame and leaving scars of emission behind them in the air tracing their trajectory in reverse. On approach, the air itself shattered as the missiles violently parted it, a keening wail heralding their approach and a thunderous crescendo accompanied them. Six in total rode down from atop the edge of the vale. The two titanic monstrosities striding abreast the one leading their triad were stabbed into by two of the missiles each. The titan on the eastern flank, reacting to the sound of the approaching hunter-killers, had turned partially to behold them and suffered the misfortune of one of the missiles diving headlong into its gaping maw while a second cleaved directly downwards into its crown. The simultaneous detonations that followed blew the monstrous creature apart from the inside-out while compressing the shredded, visceral remnants and jagged armor metal fragments downward, reconfiguring the titan into a stew of bubbling flash-cooked organic resin heaped with chunks of armor fragments pooling inside a crater where once the Urshic monster had stood while a majestic plume of flame unfurled into the sky, incandescent flames marking the spot where an enemy of the Emperor had been unmade. The second titan fared better than the first, not having turned to look at the oncoming strikes. One missile slammed directly into its armored flanks, while the other obliquely skewered into one of its gargantuan eyes. This time, the twin detonations did not quite kill it - the first missile’s melta-warhead burning straight through the armor with a concentrated lance of fusion-fire that reduced its innards to smoke and caused the crude armor plating bolted to its hide to dissolve into luminous molten fluid that dribbled across its hide and mutilated the creature further. The second missile caused its giant eye to rupture, organic membranes and cerebral fluid alike boiling away as fusion-fire screamed its way through the creature’s cranium to vaporize an entire hemisphere of its brain. That entire half of its bulbous, misshapen cranium deformed and deflated as flames filled it with the molten rudiments of its own skull and nervous tissue - but the creature did not die, instead falling to the ground with a harrowing cry from its gaping maw that would surely induce as much pain in mortal men as the creature actually felt, the resonance of its anguish bearing otherworldly potency.
Two more hunter-killer missiles curved into the back lanes of the cannon-bearing creatures situated behind the titans and their Vityaz elements, striking and eliminating two of the monstrous creatures in an instant, reducing them to billowing wafts of shredded, burning skin. Many more of the wyrd-projectile firing creatures remained, but the raw shock and awe of the strikes in the back lines caused several other of the creatures to be briefly unsettled and distracted from the battle itself as they reacted to two of their own being erased from the face of the Earth, while the Vityaz soldiers were still panicked and seeking cover along the nearby terrain.
That moment of disorientation would prove fatal. The giant gun-beasts that staggered forward, instinctively avoiding the deflagration, found themselves stumbling into a crossfire that suddenly opened its jaws before them. A loose line of Thunder Warriors emerged from the haze, bolters roaring in the hands of those of them who still had not spent all their magazines. At a glance it was impossible to say which Legion they had once been - the metal of their armour was painted many times over with the black of ash, the red of blood and the less mentionable hues of infernal ichors. But there was no mistaking their grim snarls, the ferocious curl of their scarred lips, the guttering red flame of their Primarch’s sword. Firm as the hardest metal, ragged and dented but yet unbroken, Ushotan’s Steel Lords had rallied to Aeternus’ call.
“The whelps beat us to sparking the kindling!” the Primarch bellowed, voice hoarse but vibrant with bloodlust, “Are you going to let them claim the fire, you sons of dogs?!”
The reply was more of a disjointed and elemental roar than a concerted “NO!”, but it was vehemently punctuated by a new bolter volley. The Steel Lords were a paradox; rampant and savage when in the company of more orderly forces, but now that they were among their own, their rage seemed cooler and more directed than that of most Cataegis. While the warriors who had exhausted their bolts hewed into the disorganised vityaz with their blades, the rest aimed their fire upwards. Not at the heads of the cannon-giants, nor even at the joints of their clublike limbs, but at the howling contraptions of brass and wyrdflame chained to their backs.
Horrifically destructive though they were, the cannons were not things of balanced artifice, but volatile amalgams of hellish alchemy, witchcraft and bound spirits. The Steel Lords’ bolter fire would not have been enough to destroy them, but it did damage their perilous construction, puncturing vitriol sacs, cracking blood-painted sigils, splintering warding talismans. The effects did not let themselves be expected for long. One of the stumbling beasts was instantaneously immolated as a pillar of venom-green flame erupted from its back, reducing its midsection to irradiated cinders. Another began to clumsily turn its hunched frame away from the collapse and left itself exposed to a cluster of grenades, whose initial blast bloomed into a streaming cataract of howling brimstone and struck through the knotted shoulder of its neighbour.
Ushotan himself all but vaulted over the staggered bands of Urshite warriors, charging at a particularly large and hideous cannon-beast. It lowered its horned head as it saw him approach, snapping at him with misaligned slanted jaws, but the Primarch was faster. He pushed past its stomping forelimbs and swung his sword in an upward arc, cleaving into the creature’s sagging underbelly. The plasma-coated blade sank into misbegotten flesh and struck churning unearthly organs. A howl broke out from the giant as its own burning bile consumed it from within, turning to wafts of scorching smoke as it reached the air. Clouded in the putrid fog, the remainder of the monsters ceased firing, vainly stumbling to reposition and only opening themselves further to be cut down by the Steel Lords’ onslaught.
Surging forwards with unending determination, the small squad of the Steel Sentinels had carved a bloody path towards the remaining Titan. The force of the Legion’s finest cut hard and fast - beset on all sides by wyrds, witches, and monstrosities alike. Gallahad swung his sword wide, catching many in a wide arc of gore and death. He had spearheaded this assault, acting as a bulldozer that ran through all he could. Yet, the toll of their spearhead had blunted him, his armor cracked and pierced by all manner of weapon. For the Astartes, it took all his strength to continue the rapid surge forth.
A projectile pierced his side, blowing a hole straight through both sides of his armor and almost forcing him to the ground. The Steel Sentinel held his ground, lungs quickly filling with blood that began to travel up his throat. Each of the command squad knew they had traveled too far to turn back now in their blind charge, each of them began to tire and feel the wounds of the damned they fought begin to catch them. Gallahad turned his head just enough for himself and the Legion Master to meet gazes. Arturas nodded in a wordless order and Gallahad obeyed, priming his Melta-bomb as with all the strength he could yet muster began to run forward, dropping his weapon. He gripped the bomb and held it close - none of the wretched stopped him, not that they could as he trampled mortal and abomination alike under his boot. After getting far enough, there was a small eruption in the disorganized melee as the Melta erupted sending hordes of gore and metal into the air.
Arturas noted the loss of his brother, as he and his remaining few continued to surge forwards - through the broken line. The titanic beast had continued its rampage all the while doing what it could to blunt the Imperial line. The Astartes would, in short order, bring this rampage to an end as Arturas shouted clearly into his vox ‘+Bring it down!+’
Those that could threw their Melta-charges upwards, not heeding the enemies that descended upon them to stop this attack. A cacophony of explosions hit the knee of the titan, a pained roar filling the air as its weight caused its leg to break down causing the great beast to collapse upon itself. Still alive - but crippled as it held itself up on its massive arms, trying to steady itself.
The sea of bodies was parted for the thrust of the dagger. The wyrd-beasts could no longer perform their duties as they were butchered by the Steel Lords, Infernal Phoenixes and Caged Dogs. The Verdant Raiders swept left around the kneeling titan, butchering into the defending vityaz with ruthless abandon. The Nightbringers slaughtered to the right, massacring with what little of them remained to fight. Primarchs Aeternus, Bodiciia, and Theadon sprinted on a warpath to the titan. The final blow before the breach of Mosvoroth.
The Lord of the Verdant Raiders vaulted towards the titan’s raised knee, bashing aside a vityaz that tried to defy her. Weeping wounds dotted her ceramite plating, freshly spilling blood onto the battlefield. She mustered on with a single purpose in mind. With the force of forty-thousand superhumans, Bodiciia of the Second Legio Cataegis hefted her greataxe far behind her and hurled it. The weapon ripped through the air like a javelin thrown by a god, threatening to perforate the soundbarrier from her sheer, murderous force. It did not merely bite into the Urshic giant - it tore through plate, flesh, and bone in a single, brutal maneuver. The Primarch disappeared in a sea of bodies as she collapsed in exhaustion.
The response was felt across the valley. The beast bellowed in outraged agony as another knee had been taken, sundering what remained of its strength to stand. It lashed out with one of its colossal arms to swipe away anything and everything that dared to harm it. Urshites and Imperials were tossed like ragdolls or smashed into gory paste by the attack. It’s rampage didn’t last long as Theaddon closed in on the right arm of the titan, leaping onto the giant’s planted hand to slash with his powersword. The beast attempted to pull back in fury, yet the Nightbringer was already unloading his bolt pistol into cut and exposed flesh. Sinew erupted and tore as the gargantuan ripped free from its forsaken extremity. The Primarch of the Eighteenth leapt back into the melee bathed in titan ichor.
Primarch Aeternus thundered forward as the battle unfolded around him. The Steel Lords had cleared the path. The XXI had allowed them the strike. The Verdant Raiders, Steel Sentinels, and Nightbringers had brought the titan down. All that was left was the killing strike. None of the Urshites remained before him except the gargantuan itself. Reality seemed to waver as the Lord of the First Legio sprinted closer to the being. Killing deities was what he was born for.
The titan snapped out at him as the distance was finally closed. Even in tyrant armor, Aeternus was meteoric in comparison to the Urshic monstrosity. The Emperor’s Blade side-stepped the bite and drove his fist into the left hand of the colossus. Bone and sinew detonated as the Primarch shattered the joint connecting the extremity with a resounding punch. Kalagann’s creature roared in defiance as it finally collapsed, writhing on the ground like the long forgotten worms of Terra’s past. The howl was cut short as Aeternus stepped back to his right, swinging Apocrypha into the beast’s cranium. Crimson-wreathed plasma sawed through the armor protecting it’s skull, then into hardened hide, then into maroon sinew, and finally into bone and grey matter. Vitae ejected out onto the Godslayer in burning chunks, unstable plasmic energy cascading out of the being like a river of blood. It screamed anew in an agonizing song most foul, threatening to burst his eardrums with each cry. He ignored it as he did every monster that he slayed.
“Suffer not the unclean to live!” Aeternus roared as he thumbed the activation rune on his greatsword. Steam violently vented out of the crossguard in a thin veil, rapidly cooling the weapon’s systems as it awakened. He lifted and planted his foot atop the creature’s skull for balance, pressing down with enough force not to be blown backwards by his blade’s plasmic power.
A thunderous crack rolled across the battlefield as Apocrypha finally discharged into the dying titan. The body of the gargantuan bloated and swelled, becoming a self-contained plasmic sun, unstable plasma flowing through it’s veins with living crimson energy. It finally burst into a miniature mushroom cloud of vitae and sinew, cascading titan gore in a short blood-fueled shower around Aeternus. His boot lifted and stomped on the creature’s cranial remains, crushing feeble bone beneath him. Molten plasma seeped from beneath his foot, soaking the valley floor with life once more. The beast was slain, leaving one final gargantuan to finish the valley invasion. The vityaz around him were slaughtered as the last of their morale was crushed, butchered by Astartes and Cataegis alike. Aeternus lifted his gaze to Mosvoroth as the last titan began to topple, doomed to follow it’s kin into oblivion.
At its feet, the ground churned with steel and blood, a spiny morass where the frenzied shapes of men seemed to melt into one another. The Annihilators and Red Knights had charged in to fell the beast, blinded in the last throes of maddened rage to anything but the largest living thing they could see - just as well, for all they saw now was to them an enemy to cut down. Aeternus could barely distinguish between the warriors of the two legions now, washed from head to foot in crimson gore, their armour gouged and broken. Only his expert knowledge of his brothers’ ways let him discern better - here were Knights carving into the monster's ankle with their long overhead strikes, there the last sons of the Fifth Cataegis struck at its pillarlike bones with the sweeps of their axes.
He saw, unmistakable, the two Primarchs emerge from the seething quagmire, made more alike than nature or the Emperor ever could by the sanguine fires of battle. Like the closest of brothers and the bitterest of rivals, they jostled and vied for every step, each burning with the singular will to strike the killing blow. They did not see how the titan's rampant swipes thinned ever more the shrunken ranks of their legionaries, carving gouges of viscera and torn limbs into the dense mass of Thunder Warriors who had lost all thought of their own safety. Blades broke, stuck in masses of impious flesh, glanced from bone spurs and clattered away, and so they fought on with nails and teeth like beasts.
Like a mastodon harried by a pack of slavering hounds, the monstrosity bled out, its legs a ruin of wounded meat that could not hope to support its unnatural mass. With a keening howl, it began to fall, first to its knees and then down to the corpse-choked earth. In a final blaze of animal rage, it opened wide its jaws, and its throat shone from within with the bio-plasmic glow of a scream that would incinerate its slayers.
Jotharion and Charmagnol could have seen their demise rising from the titan’s innards, could have taken a single step back, avoided their doom - if there had been anything left in them but the rabid fervour of carnage. The gigantic head plunged towards them, and as one single body they leapt to meet it. All they felt was the hated enemy approaching within reach of their arms, and the other at their side, that hated and inseparable presence that spurred each of them to strive and surpass someone they could not name for a challenge long forgotten.
As one, the two blades struck deep into the colossal skull, and as one the Primarchs screamed their victory. The titan screamed with them, and its voice was blinding death.
When the glare was gone, Aeternus could see nothing move around the enormous corpse. Gone were the Thunder Warriors, crushed under the toppled enormity or scorched to blackened heaps by the plasmic cry. Gone was the horror’s very head, a carbonised gash all that remained above its shoulders. And gone were Jotharion and Charmagnol, vanquishers and vanquished, who had raced one another into the maw of death itself, and whose contest would now only ever be adjudicated by memory.
And in memory did they become immortal. The Godslayer witnessed their final, glorious moments with bittersweet sorrow beginning to fill his chest. He’d never forget any of their valiant sacrifices - so long as his mind remained his own as the Emperor had said. He was grateful that their deaths were as righteous as they had wanted. The moment of remorse passed no quicker than it had begun, but the pain of their loss remained. His attention was drawn back to the immediate battlelines, now beginning to progressively thin.
An endless cry of victory rose up from across the battlelines as the vityaz attempted to retreat. They were butchered for their cowardice by Astartes and Cataegis - those that had managed to survive the reckless assault on the valley. The last of Kalagann’s wyrd-managerie were slaughtered by relentless cavalcades of scissoring bolter rounds and volkite beams. Combat blade, motorized chainsword, and powered blade mercilessly murdered the wretches that attempted to surrender. Banners were raised in righteous victory, each bearing the raptor and thunderbolt of the Emperor. Glory for Him of Himalazia was on every scarred lip across the battlefield.
The Urshic defense collapsed as whatever remained of their stalwart defenders began to retreat back into Mosvoroth proper. Heavy weapon crews attempted to organize a tactical withdraw, only to be hammered by Imperial artillery and surgical strikes from surviving genewarriors. Limping warmachines tried to scurry back into the gates of the hive-citadel, where murderholes poured out an ever-dwindling deluge of lasfire and bullet into the invaders. The bulk of the Imperial Army quickly filled in where the Cataegis charge had butchered the darktide, units beginning to set up new firing solutions and reinforce the genewarriors where necessary.
Yet the Cataegis continued onward, leaving their dead in the blood-soaked ground of Ursh. Primarch Aeternus remained as the Imperial line readjusted for the final dagger thrust into Mosvoroth. Their objective was completed in the valley - only the fight for the hive remained. He dared not request for the Primarchs to take stock of their numbers. Rex already knew what the casualty list would look like. Twenty five of his God-Slayers remained to fight in Kalagann’s fortress. How many of his siblings remained? He shrugged off the thought. Not now, he thought to himself. He would mourn their loss when Kalagann was dethroned. When the Raptor flew over Mosvoroth - or what remained of it.
+’Reform the line! We will not stop until Kalagann’s head has been cleaved from his body and the Raptor flies over Ursh! For Him of Himalazia! For Unity! Raptor Imperialis!’+ Primarch Aeternus roared over the vox, pushing the Cataegis onward even as they fell to the geneflaw. He knew that he pushed them to their death. In the words of the Emperor - it was His final gift and His last mercy.
The titan-gates of Mosvoroth that had held Ursh from invaders for centuries fell within several seconds of the order. Their defense fell in a shower of artillery fire that rivaled the destruction of Sanctii, vomited from Basilisks, Minotaurs, and Baneblades. The walls of the citadel fractured and cracked from Imperial reckoning, sundering new breaches for the various Imperial forces to enter through. Death sang from every mouth on the battlefield. Glory was gained from every Urshite murdered in their bastion. The end of Ursh was upon them.
Credits: @MarshalSolgriev @FrostedCaramel @Terminal @Oraculum @Lauder
