The Cleansing of Nordyc
Spectres
The north had met them with deathly cold.
It had been no oversight of strategy, not with the Master of the Lines himself at the lead of this campaign. The push into the heart of Nordyc had been timed to take advantage of the warm season, for all that such divisions of the year still mattered upon the profaned cradle of Mankind. The human troops of the Excertus Imperialis that marched into the priest-king’s domain had been selected from among the hardiest units of the great nascent army, and no expense had been spared to outfit them to the last with cold-weather equipment. The tanks of a fleet of tracked vehicles had been filled with precious fuel. Sustained marching rhythms had been devised to keep the bodies heated with the warmth of action.
All of it had been in vain.
It was no natural wintry chill that rode on the winds of the Maulland Sen lands. Perhaps some terrible weapon of past apocalyptic wars had forever marked that already arctic region, tearing a howling, icy wound in the fabric of its climate; perhaps it was something more sinister still. Vast and abnormal, like a colossal and static cyclone, the cold radiated out from the heart of the tribal dominion, its intensity increasing as one neared the source in a perverse mirror of the mounting strength of the defences the Imperium faced in its advance. The gales that had been scarce more than a gnawing nuisance around the first line of balt-forts turned into a torrent of freezing whips that peeled away skin left exposed to it, leaving the frostbitten flesh beneath to fester gangrenously in a matter of minutes. Crystals of hard, dirty snow swirled in the air with astonishing violence, cutting like uncountable tiny blades and wearing away even sturdy winter coats. Sometimes a noxious reek passed through the wind, like the breath of distant graves and slaughterhouses, and sickness walked with it among the ranks.
Inexorably, these ranks began to thin. Every morning, when camp was lifted, there were bodies that did not rise. Soldiers collapsed mid-step during marches, eyes wide amid jaundiced skin, leaving their comrades the grim choice of shouldering their inert, enervated weight at risk of their own dwindling strength or leaving them to expire in the filthy snow. Raiders harried them at every step, charging out from the blizzard with froth on their lips and mad ferocity in their eyes. The warriors of Maulland Sen seemed miraculously immune to the savagery of the climate that so harrowed the invading force, ever spry and vigorous despite the crudeness of their attire, and the sight of blood itself sustained them. Bare and hostile though the land was, thousands seemed to always be lurking among the cairns and snowdrifts.
And still the Raptor advanced. That most great and fearsome weapon in the Emperor’s hands, his augmented warriors of generations old and new, did not fear the fury of the eternal illwinter as mortal men did, and they were the edge of the blade that fell on the rotting cities of the north. Livettir fell, and Kromden, Tuvabti, the fortress of Lägua. Every time, resistance was no more stubborn - for it had been inhumanly strenuous from the very first day - but heavier, more massive, more lethal. The hirdmen of the bastion-chiefs wore crude powered armour and wielded roaring chainblades. The genebrutes and necro-cyborgs grew larger, thorned in iron and bone, driven to rage by shamanic concoctions. Mutants of frightful size and misshapen form stalked the approaches, felling men with lashing boneless limbs and overturning tanks with tusk and claw. Sorcerers and wyrdmakers, each more wizened and cunning than the last, called forth hurricanes of iridescent flame and turned the ground to swamps of hands and teeth. Through all this the lightning-marked armies carved their way, burning sacrificial pits, tearing down grotesque temples, shattering the chains of those shivering empty-eyed thralls that were spared the Steel Lords’ blind wrath.
No death toll or horror could halt them, it seemed, until four months into the campaign, after the taking of Opdhall, a storm struck. It was not one of the cruel snow-hails that rose nearly every day to reap more victims, but a disturbance of vast magnitude even by the measure of blighted Nordyc. Night and day were indistinguishable in its shadow, and the air became solid with splintered ice. Those few unaugmented that remained with the main force were quite unable to push against the blasts of deafening wind, and even the gene-warriors of the Legiones found themselves blinded when they ventured out into the gales. Vehicles could not move without their tracks being immured in frozen snow within seconds. Whether a vagary of the season or a Warp-born curse, the cataclysmic tempest accomplished what the hardships and abominations of the northlands had not, and the army hunkered down among conquered walls to wait out its course.
Opdhall was a large city, and though it had been spared the excesses of the Thunder Warriors, plenty of space remained for the occupants after the more warlike portion of its population had been felled in its taking. Within its roughly circular walls, it was a chaos of ill-planned buildings, from stone hovels and the long-halls favoured in the septentrional parts of Terra to robust towers and fortified courtyards, each of which had been breached at bloody cost. At its core, the great temple had been left standing as a means of shelter, though its hideous idols had been destroyed, and the grove of strange trees that had stood near it in preternatural defiance of the climate burned in horror by the first soldiers to behold it. A similar fate had been narrowly avoided by the curious and misshapen cattle kept by the populace, these lumbering hairy beasts with bulbous bodies and eerie black eyes, for, unsettling though they were, the liberated slaves of the clans depended on them until more wholesome subsistence could be supplied.
Encampments had sprung up throughout the frigid grey maze. Ushotan’s men largely kept to themselves, and only fragments of their coarse war songs could sometimes be heard through the wailing storm from the longhouses where they burned their fires. Army units sheltered in the shadow of the walls, though their garrisons rarely patrolled the bastions themselves, and not merely because of the weather. Rumours ran through the improvised barracks like a plague of sentinels that had vanished from their posts, or been found dead, the barrels of their own weapons between their teeth. Murmurs of faces glimpsed in the shadows and the snow, the horribly familiar lineaments of dead comrades, beckoning or reproachful. Of voices that whispered in the cacophony of the wind. Few eyes and ears dared turn towards the outer darkness.
For a time, it was as though outside the walls Terra, and all the universe, had ceased to exist.
The gene warriors of the nineteenth, oft situated with the elements of the burgeoning Imperial Army, found themselves ever on watch in the blizzard. Constantly did the Astartes stand vigil to ensure that the rumours of abandonment and desertion were mere falsehood. While they had been ordered to protect the auxiliaries, when cowards tried to flee into the blinding snow, one of the stoic Sentinels ensured they met a traitor’s end in a swift yet bloody end. They knew of the poor morale and the hardships, but they would not suffer the abandonment of the Emperor’s Will, not so long as they were able to stand vigil.
Arturas in the meanwhile, had convened with his inner circle of officers, taking stock of their situation and planning their next advance. The wind howled outside his tent and the holographic table often stuttered as power threatened to deactivate, but still his voice commanded them, in a grim resolve, “Units of the 10th Infantry Battalion continued to deteriorate in their resolve. Five men had to be out to the sword to maintain their position, an officer included. We do not command the undying loyalty of our foe - nor the admiration of our Emperor.”
The tent was silent as the officers listened, the light hum of lamps and wind continuing to be the only noise other than the Master’s words. “Yet, we must maintain order, lest we are little different from the savages that we conquer. Gwaine, what do your men report?” He asked, looking to his most senior officer, the armour of his form already scarred from battles with barbarians.
“Our scouts report there is a small camp located not too far north of here, we believe it to be either a recon element or a rogue raiding force looking to get behind our lines,” Gwaine said in a gruff voice, looking to the battle map and pressing on it to mark the location. It gave a flicker to his touch, earning a grunt of disagreement from the Astarte, but he looked back to Arturas. “I can take five of my finest and drive them off. A small victory but a victory nonetheless.”
“No,” Arturas said looking to Gwaine, “Take five of your finest along with an element of Auxilia. Ensure that they have the victory, for their victory will raise morale and give them stories for the dark.”
“If enough return to tell of it,” came a voice from the tent’s entrance. It almost seemed as though the wind outside were modulated into words; though it had the depth and strength of a transhuman chest, it was hollow, little more than a loud, crackling whisper - the sound of a diseased throat.
An Astartes in the grey and slate of the Ninth Legion stepped in through the tent-flaps. The numeral on his right pauldron was haloed with the markings of a cohort-captain. Its counterpart on the left, however, was invisible underneath a crude yet intricate mesh of ropes that wrapped around the armour-piece, covering it with flecks of white like trapped snow. A closer look, however, revealed their true nature - human bones, dozens of them, fixed in the web’s many knots. A similar ornament ran around his right shinguard in oblique symmetry.
“If you bring troops on a raid, keep your eye on them as much as on the enemy,” he rasped, “There are worse things than snowblind outside the walls.”
The Astartes of the Nineteenth collectively looked to their cousin, not seemingly off-put by the web of bone and rope. Their faces portrayed no emotion, but Arturas gave a nod of respect to the sudden appearance of his kin. The Master looked to the captain with a slight curiosity to his eye, imperceptible to the average man, but there were no normal men within the tent. “Cousin, I will make note of your advice, but I assure you we have been keeping a watchful eye on them. They need a victory, something to cling to.”
“So they do, but it is a blade’s edge to walk.” The marine straightened as he stepped in, raising a half-closed fist to his unadorned pauldron in salute. “Nidhur Svaat. I lead the Bone Walkers.”
Such epithets, as fanciful as they were macabre, had been growing common in the legion’s vox-chatter, supplanting the numeration of its units as the patterns of trophies became signs of commonality. The very designation of the Ninth was more and more frequently accompanied by the word “reviled” since the first war-calls had sounded at the edge of Nordyc lands.
“Fortunate that I find you so. It is of this very matter that I have come to speak.”
“Then speak freely, cousin. Any advice or strategy from a fellow astartes is welcome within this tent, and I value the thoughts of those outside of my own brothers,” Arturas stated whilst walking around the holo-table, ending his words whilst clasping onto the shoulder pad Nidhur. He lightly tugged the Bone Walker towards the holo-table, his arm moving from shoulder to back as the lights flickered once more. The master looked at the display, “Tell me, Svaat, what is it that you wish to say on the matter?”
The cohort-captain fell into step with ease, craning his neck over the map as he approached it.
“Since we are among bloodkin here,” he gestured widely at the circle of Sentinels, his arm sprier than his voice, “These are things I would not trust those troops on the walls with, but you should know. There is some truth to what they whisper.” He paused, whether to rest his strained throat or for effect. “Dark spirits roam outside.”
“Believing in spirits and superstitions are unbecoming of an Astartes,” Gwaine said coldly, casting a stern gaze to the other captain before continuing, “We fight against mutants, nothing more, nothing less.”
There were silent looks between the other Sentinels present, unspoken murmurs almost as powerful as the wind that roared outside. Arturas merely cast a look to Gwaine before speaking in a softer tone, “While my Consul has spoken out of turn, he is correct. That said I shall hear all advice, and so I ask; what do you mean by dark spirits? More conjurations from the enemy psykers?”
Svaat’s head shifted from side to side, the intimation of his gaze sweeping around behind the opaque lenses of his visor, and he pointed a hand at the map, finger hovering outward of the city’s eastern walls.
“Three nights ago I led a raid in this direction,” he began, “Our prey had dived into the blizzard, but we would have found them. If not for
it.” He looked up again. “We saw, coming towards us, Grezol, our third blade. He answered our battle-call as he should have, told us he had tracked the Maulland Sen. We would have followed him.”
With a deep rasping sound, he breathed in.
“But Grezol died at Livettir. He said in his own voice he had crawled from under the corpses, forgotten, but I saw him torn in half by a wyrd. Whatever
it was, it was not our brother.” He rested both hands on the table’s edge now. “We could have blamed a psychic delusion, but our entire cohort had seen him move, heard him speak in reply to us. How he returned the call, as he would have known to. The thing that wore Grezol’s skin could think, and it had taken the memories of the dead. I have no better word for it than one from the long night.”
Once again the group of Sentinels were silent, a dread formed in the tent as Arturas unclamped his arm from his cousin. While normally afforded a more friendly and compassionate aura, it was instead one of a silent contempt. The talk of some form of skinwalker seemed to have perturbed the gallant and it seemed a conversation happened in glances and stares. Gwaine and Arturas continued to share stern looks before the master of the legion grasped his helmet that had laid to the side of the table.
“What is it that you call it, Svatt?” He asked, his brothers stepping back into the dim lit recesses of the tent, the eyes from their helms looking at their gene-cousin. Arturas’ face was grim, “What is this monster called?”
“In our speech - what we once spoke, it is called
tzalaal.” If Svaat did notice the atmosphere in the tent growing heavier, neither his expressionless visor nor his belaboured voice betrayed it. “It means many things. A spirit, a walking corpse, something that wanders the wastes at night, sometimes just an unruly machine. A word that will no longer be needed come Unity, but for now…”
He laughed, forcedly, as if to make some light of these things. It sounded sepulchral.
“Spitefather could have said it without sounding a savage like I must. What matters is that the Army does not start thinking they are fighting more than flesh and blood. You know what that would mean for them. Take care to shield them from strange sights if you take them out there.”
“Does this beast still roam the blizzard?” Gwaine asked, his hand resting upon the hilt of his sword. Two other captains matched his motion, whilst Arturas slid his helm upon his head. There was an agreement in the air, “If it does, then that compromises security. A beast hunt may be in order, on top of our planned raid.”
“It must, if the whispers continue,” Svaat said flatly, as if it were a matter of course, “Perhaps it is not alone, and there is one for every face and rumour. However that is, a hunt would do us all good, as much as a skirmish for the troops. Some of us would be ready to join you.”
“Then a hunt it is, cousin. Would certainly rid ourselves of idleness,” Gwaine said, his face twisting into a malformed smile, an almost artificial emotion on the perpetually stoic Sentinels. The smile was short lived as he stepped past the holo-table, the common scowl returning, “That said, if we are hunting a monster that changes form. Having our other cousins join would be of great aid.”
“So it would.” Despite the words of assent, the captain’s rasp sounded noncommittal. “A witch-eye might see what we do not.” He turned to the tent-flaps, glancing back over his shoulder as he strode towards the howl of the gales outside. “I will gather our band. We will meet when and where you wish.”
“I shall send you our plans,” Arturas said, his officers standing behind him as the form of the Bone Walker strode into the blizzard. One of his subordinates stepped up behind him and a silent question was drilled into the back of the Legion Master’s mind - one of what they hunted and if they could truly find it. Slowly they backed further into the tent as the holo-table went dark and drenched them in shadow once more, whatever friendliness of the Sentinels that was there disappeared within a moment of a moment. Dread loomed over their command tent before Arturas joined his brothers and drew his sword, speaking the words of their purpose, “Corruption will become rife, brothers. Ensure that they remain silent and silence the terrors of Old Night.”
The city walls were as the border between the waking world and an inchoate universe of dream. While the island of relative calm within, with its narrow howling streets and its fires in the grey murk, harkened to archaic times when nothing stood between man and the elements but what he made with his own hands, it was firm and grounded, a vision of stone and wood, walls and roofs. As soon as one moved a step outside the hastily reconstructed gates or the mostly-filled breaches that served as secondary entrances, however, all of that was wiped from sight so fast that one might question if it had ever existed at all. Swirling whiteness was all the eye saw, and only the fine skein of shade between the snowy streaks became any clearer to the more unnaturally refined pupils. Anything further than arm’s reach was no more than vague shadows, rippling like reflections in an arctic river. The other senses fared little better; vox was the only to make one heard short of shouting into another’s ear.
The designated assembly point could well have been any other if one did not lean close to the wall, tracing its surface in search of what set that stretch apart. One step away, and it became nothing more than a dim looming cloud in the storm, curtained by lashing snow. Even so, it was the only form that was almost solid, and thus the one and true anchor to orient oneself by.
Trudging through the whiteness came the visages of Astartes, carrying along sword and shield as knights preparing for gruesome battle. It was two battle-squads worth of them, each hand picked to hunt the query with minds steeled by the horrors of Old Night. Their forms cast shadows in the whiteness but they were undaunted by the storm, much like the tanks of the mortal men that began to mobilize - ready to assault the small outpost that the Steel Sentinels had pointed them to.
The giants came across a crest, capes whipping and white flakes clinging to the metal of their armor. “Night Hunter has reached rendezvous,” one of them spoke into the vox, pinging their cousins to soon start the great hunt that had been called.
“The Bone Walkers see you,” Svaat’s husk of a voice answered. Soon, the party could see shapes moving further down the slope. Though details were difficult to make out through the snowy haze, some of them bulged with dully angular protrusions across their superhuman stature, the fanciful patterns of their mesh of cord and bone looking like so many ridged outgrowths of their armour. Others trailed fluttering squares and strips of what seemed to be rigid tattered cloth from their shoulders and chests. “The Excoriators are with us. They are the least troubled by this land of all our number.”
“We will cut around from behind as you advance,” another voice continued. Unlike Svaat’s hollow crackle, it was an even guttural grinding, as if every word were being forcefully pulled out from some murky depth. “If the prey scatters, we will drive them back. And if we see something approach from further out, we will warn you.”
One of the figures below swept an arm in a high gesture, and its companions began to withdraw into the blizzard from the Sentinels’ view. Leaving them to their silence, watching the lights of the Imperial column pass noiselessly through the whiteout. The Astartes bounded shortly after them, keeping their wits about them.
The Imperial column pushed in treaded transports, packed with men shivering despite whatever warm clothing they could scavenge. Two tanks led them, engines roaring as they followed the waypoint given to them by the Emperor’s finest. While the commander of their company had dispatched them to dislodge this enemy scouting force, many of the men dreaded the thought of driving through such a blizzard - visibility was all but lost and the ground was indistinguishable from the air in front of them. However, it was better than sitting and freezing to death waiting for it all to blow over.
The mortals drove for an hour before coming to a halt, only a mere 100 metres away from the encampment they had been informed of. Orders transferred and the men unloaded, fixing bayonets and ensuring their rifles were in good condition. The vaunted Astartes ram close to them, power swords crackling against the snow that whipped around them.
“Bring ruin! Strike hard, strike fast! Leave none alive!” One of the Sentinels’ distorted voices called raising his blade and earned a round of cheers from the soldiery - a whistle sounded and a general charge began. The two tanks fired blindly into the whiteness, unknowing of if their rounds would strike true or not. The armored transports advanced behind the main infantry line, awaiting any sign of the enemy so as to dispense whatever support they could.
There was a brief moment before the enemy returned fire, autoguns ripping through the blizzard just as blindly as the attackers. Explosions of the tank shells could be heard just barely above the ripping winds, and soon, a fierce melee as the enemy force charged the Imperial assault. The transports began firing, stubbers and las hitting mutated men and horrid monsters. The Sentinels did not immediately engage, half-heartedly pushing forwards to slash and kill and maim - but it was the virus of man that would see the day.
Bayonets flashed and swords revved, crimson joined the blinding white winds and there was momentary confusion. One could hardly make out the silhouette of the man in front of them, but the Astartes guided them, shouting into vox and to coordinate with the mortal men that knew not what else to do. They acted as their name-sale, a Steeled Sentinel watching over their human brethren, shielding them from the worst that would come.
Squads of men fought tooth and nail, it seemed that the Nordyc abominations had truly been caught by surprise and those that had charged out were only those manic and hate-filled enough to do so. The imperial force swept into the enemy camp, but the fight was a one sided affair, and the Sentinels merely stood back and watched them achieve their assured victory. “This is Night Hunter, victory will come. Let the true hunt commence,” the captain said over vox, turning away and to stalk into the blizzard, blades drawn.
“Understood,” the crackling wind-voice replied, and then all was still save for the unceasing howl of the storm. The crunching of snow underfoot and the sporadic rumbling echoes from the overrun encampment were the only isles of sound in that churning all-encompassing ocean, the blank greyness of the blizzard-choked sky over the pale ground a mirror of that almost dreamlike solitude.
Until…
“Brother?” the voice resonated into the ear of every Sentinel, though only their captain could see the dim figure slowly approaching out of the murk of the invisible horizon. The words were belaboured, ragged with fatigue, yet penetratingly familiar all the same. “Is it truly you?”
The captain’s head inclined as he scrutinised the figure, a hand instinctively hovering over the activation of his power sword. It was truest haunting to him, for that voice was as unmistakable to him. No Astartes dared approach, opting to let the figure approach them in the damned storm, many training weapons in horrid distrust of someone lost to them. They spread out in a wide formation, ready to kill from every angle should their suspicion be confirmed.
“Captain,” one of the Sentinels spoke, prompting their leader as he finally activated his power sword - the crackling and hissing of snow reverberated through the winds.
“I know,” the captain said in a low but confident tone as he eyed down the figure. He knew no true Astartes would allow such fatigue to overcome him, no true Astartes would be alone this far out in the wastes of a storm. Neither would an Astartes carry the voice of a dead man. He tried to ping the being with a blink, but none came through - neither did any evidence of it show upon other forms of inspection. The Captain’s eyes narrowed as he spoke into the encrypted channel with his cousins, “Contact.”
“We hear you,” came Svaat’s whistle, followed by a quiet burst of speech evidently addressed to someone else - a hissing, guttural argot that blended Gothic with a foreign idiom, through which the words
near and
seen any emerged. After severing that exchange, the cohort-captain of the Ninth Legion spoke into the vox again. “We cannot confirm a presence. Be wary.”
The dim figure had continued to draw closer, its features progressively forcing themselves into visibility out from the leaden murk. It was larger than any man, the height and bulk that of an Astartes, and the angles and sharp traits of its outline suggested a familiar pattern of armour. Its gait, however, was as incongruous as its voice had sounded. The nearer it came, the more inconsistent its steps were. Now they had the stability and confidence to match the stranger’s appearance; now suddenly they broke into a dragging, almost limping shuffle; now again they hastened to quick strides, all trace of impediment gone. The sight was an uncanny one.
“How glad I am to have found you,” the voice came again, “I have wandered in this damned storm for weeks. Another day, I think, and I would have gone mad.”
The captain wanted to show aggression, to charge forth at what they were seeing and strike it down in the name of the Eagle. His brothers wanted to as well, he could see their fingers hovering over the trigger from where he stood, but this situation required caution and he knew not how powerful this creature was. He needed information, subtly he pinged his location to the Bone Walker’s, before he described his blade in a bid to buy time. The importance was that the captain sought to know if this was a witch’s conjuration or some other foul trick to lower the guard of the Emperor’s finest.
“State your designation, no Sentinel walks alone,” the captain ordered in as much a more conversational tone as he could.
“I am Legionary
Heider.” Somehow, the name sounded in a peculiar timbre, as if the voice had momentarily been replaced by another, very similar yet strange one. “At Kromden, I was cut away from my unit. I thought I would die then, but duty raised me back to my feet, despite my wounds..”
It cut off, and the figure staggered on its feet, slowing to a limp.
“I have endured them so far, but they are deep. Brothers, if I had not found you now…” It raised a gauntleted hand in the captain’s direction, then let it fall limply.
Legionary Heider, had truly died in the battle of Kromden that much was certain, but the true Heider’s body had been recovered shortly after - they would not waste the progenoid glands so fervently. The captain’s eyes narrowed and his grip tightened - wishing to destroy this clear abomination. There was pause in that as he spoke, speaking to throw the creature, “Heider? I heard you were felled throwing yourself upon an abomination larger than the night itself.”
“I thought that would be my final stroke,” Heider - the thing that claimed to be Heider - had stopped, leaning on one knee in a weary posture. Its voice had grown more tinged with fatigue to match; yet the change was too abrupt, from one word to the next, in a way no human tone would fall. “Darkness took me then. But I awoke, broken though I was, smothered under these things’ corpses. It was days until I could find the army’s trail.”
It moved one step closer. Far behind it, shades seemed to flow and twist strangely among the whirling snow.
“Very well, Heider. Now, take off your helm and say that while looking in my eyes,” the captain ordered, as the others took aim around the creature. The Sentinels would not be fooled by an apparition, for they were the watchers of humanity and they would protect their lessers from the foul predation of the terrors of Old Night.
Slowly, the creature’s arms rose to its head. With an inaudible sound, the sharp lines of the helmet were lifted, and underneath, through the sleet lay the features of Legionary Heider - or something twisted in their semblance. Under the piercing scrutiny of superhuman eyes, the terribly pale skin seemed to ripple and writhe, as if harbouring crawling worms underneath. The lips perpetually mouthed silent words. The eyes were bleak and glassy, fixed into the void.
“I am glad to have found you, brothers,” it repeated, and the words came ever so slightly faster than the frostbitten mouth had moved.
“You are no brother of ours,
creature,” the Astartes barked - in unity, the brothers of the Sentinels fired their myriad of weaponry, bolter and volkaite, upon the abomination that took on a mockery of their form. The thing contorted and flailed under the barrage, shrieking in an inhuman voice as its body pulsated and expanded, losing all pretence of a familiar form. It was rotting flesh, spongy lichen, porous bone, a writhing mass of worms at once, shuddering and extending itself into groping pseudopods. Gunfire tore clumps of nebulous ooze from its bulk, the scorching energy of the volkites cutting grievous gouges into its protean mass until it collapsed into rapidly dissipating threads of oily smoke.
It seemed, however, that its dying cry had not gone unheard.
“Hostiles!” Svaat barked through the vox, the rattle of bolter-fire threading through the storm, “Dozens of them all around! Keep fast!”
Out from the blizzard, malformed hulks were charging at the Sentinels’ position. They were human in form - soldiers, techno-barbarians, Thunder Warriors, even some Astartes - and yet at once not. Their limbs were huge, asymmetrical lumps of jagged bone and putrescence, their heads cancerous lumps of ooze gaping with toothed maws. Their steps were erratic, their bodies almost translucent as though insubstantial, yet bolts and energy-fire wounded them all the same, and the edges of their claws were frightfully solid.
They fired in nearly all directions, yet they dared not stay still, bounding about in the direction of their cousins as they felled the abominations. The captain’s sword crackled and cut through the falsehoods and lies that made up these creatures. He cleaved one in two, bisecting it before delivering a swift decapitation as it fell to the ground. Astartes were quick as they were brutal, their superhuman physiology drove them through the storm with a blinding precision as their rounds ripped through malformed cretins that tried to snap and claw at the Astartes that proved much too fast for their forms.
The captain deduced these were ambush predators brought about by the Nordyc wyrds, nothing more than a byproduct of the horrid practices of the witches that made these lands. His sword ripped through another. Then, he saw that one of these creatures blindsided one of his brothers, swiping at him with his claws and tearing through his armor as if it were paper - a lethal blow for a human. Yet, he witnessed the battle-brother raise his volkaite and shoot the being in what constituted its chest. The captain slowed to allow the wounded to catch up, they would not abandon their kin to these monstrosities.
“Svaat, tread carefully, armour means nothing to these abominations,” the captain spoke into the vox, bringing up his plasma pistol to shoot a creature point-blank.
“They are not wholly of this world,” the cohort-captain’s voice convened, and moments after the warrior himself was emerging from the murk, stepping backwards to avoid a lunging bite from a Steel Lord whose head was a many-eyed bestial skull. The marine’s bone-adorned eviscerator chainblade arced back, dragging through the semi-corporeal horror as if through sludge, before a hacking blow from another onrushing legionnaire of the Ninth broke it into scattering miasma. “Yet they bleed all the same.”
About them, more Bone Walkers and Excoriators were pulling close, tightening their front against the onslaught of the otherworldly pack. Many had their armour scored by scrapes and gashes, but the spurts of their flamers scorched more and more of the creatures to cinders, and ever fewer new assailants were materialising out of the shade.
A hideous bellowing roar rang out then, and the howl of the storm echoed it. A tremendous figure burst into sight, encased in the loose remnants of Thunder Warrior armour, but grotesquely magnified and elongated in its many-jointed limbs. Dead-blue skin gave way to patches of cerulean scales and cancerous clumps of yellow eyes across its swollen, exposed arms and legs, and azure smoke streamed from the broken side of its halved, now-cyclopic skull. Distended fingerbones sharpened to talons raked the ground as the monstrosity hurled itself forward.
“Strike fast,” Svaat’s words sounded through the vox as he lurched to the side, bringing his weapon to bear.
“Bring
ruin!” The captain of the Night Hunters bellowed through the vox, eager to take on the giant that dared show itself. His sword cut through the lesser beings as if they were nothing but a crop being felled during harvest. He fired three blasts from his plasma pistol as he met the beast in battle, parrying and striking as the master swordsman that the legion had based itself after. Yet, a single strike harsher than that of even a custodian sent the captain flying back, careening through the blizzard. He had caught its backhand, luckily enough to merely have his ribs shattered and his chest piece dented near-beyond recognition. The captain roared in anger, “Bring it down, cousin! With me!”
With renewed and unshakable vigour, the Sentinels surged forth, fighting as one unit with the cousins as they dispelled the apparitions. The captain hurled himself forwards, jumping upon the beast and driving his sword into its form. As it stumbled to the ground, spewing dark ichor from its wound, Svaat’s chainblade met its throat and tore. The abomination’s clawed limbs spasmed, and the light in its many eyes guttered out.
The last of the spectral figments died with it, discorporating into wails and ragged smoke. A sudden peace descended on the snowy field, tentative at first and almost not trusting in itself, but surer and gentler with every passing moment. What began as a suspicion solidified to amazed certainty as the torturously familiar howl grew weaker, and then weaker still.
The storm was abating.
Lord Zee
Cyclone