06-12-2016, 12:15 AM
The 31st millenium, Istvaan III. The world burns, its surface razed, its vast hives abandoned and its people slaughtered. The Warmaster had decimated his own legions, attempting to purge those he deemed too loyal to the Emperor to join him in his betrayal from the ranks of the legions. He sent dozens of companies of Astartes to the surface in a wave of drop pods, under the pretenses of crushing a rebellion, before bathing the world in fire and turning upon the crews of his own ships.
Only due to the sacrifice of Captain Saul Tarvitz of the Emperor’s Children did anything survive, hidden deep within the spires and tunnels of the world as the bombs fell, annihilating any other traces of life, rotting the world’s inhabitants into nothing but decaying sludge and bone, before covering the world in great storms of flame with a single lance blast. Cities were left charred husks, and the dying screams of billions echoed through the Empyrean. Even a number of unfortunate Astartes and civilians who had made it to shelter died in agony, having brought the life-eating necrophage with them into the bunkers.
Upon receiving news of Tarvitz’s plan and the survivors, the Red Angel himself, Angron, ordered his legion to mobilize for a ground assault in a fit of blind rage. Or, perhaps, out of the desire to give his sons an honourable death. Whatever reason the primarch had, it didn’t matter anymore.
Under the blazing and cruel sun of the dead world, the survivors lay inside makeshift trenches and the rubble-strewn buildings of the capital, Khry Vanak. Legionnaires, soldiers and a scattered handful of lost, terrified civilians, left broken and battered. With Astartes emerging from their shelters after the firestorms had subsided, the legion vox channels crackled to life, demanding answers, screaming towards the skies and raging in futility against the very gods themselves. But as soon as the remnants had begun to organize themselves, a rain came, a rain of steel and ceramite, tumbling down towards the earth. The loyalists knew their end was upon them.
Exiting their drop pods, gripped by frenzy and madness, the Eaters of Worlds charged towards their former comrades across the ashen wastes they had laid to ruin, with the Red Angel himself at the front of the assault, his chainaxes emitting guttural roars from their engines in anticipation for the coming battle.
As the charging berserkers finally reached the storm-wracked ruins of the capital, the response was similarly savage. No quarter was asked, and none was given. What little weapon emplacements the desperate loyalists had were used to their full effect, cutting down the first wave of World Eaters in a hail of lascannon beams, splinter shells and boltgun fire. But in the end, though their defense was valiant, the numbers of the traitors were simply too great, and they broke through the front lines in a hail of whirring steel, their once shining white armour now stained with the blood of their former brothers.
Eventually however, the tide was turned. Under the exemplary leadership of Saul Tarvitz and the legendary commander Garviel Loken, and with the brave sacrifice of Captain Ehrlen of the World Eaters, the loyalist forces had managed to scatter the traitors in the corpse-strewn streets of the capital. While squads of World Eaters still scoured the streets, searching for more foes to sate their endless bloodlust, they were disorganized, and allowed the loyalists a brief moment of respite.
Waiting in his battle barge far above the world, Horus seethed in his command bridge, the shadows of the ship obscuring his furled, wrinkled brow. His plan was in ruins. For a brief moment, the arch-traitor simply considered cutting his losses and bombing Angron and his sons into dust alongside the loyalists, but having the World Eater fleet turn on him was a loss he simply could not afford. So, attempting to turn the failings of his brother into a success, Horus ordered a full-scale ground assault on the capital.
After weeks of fighting and desperate scavenging for whatever supplies were left, their armour and clothing, formerly showing the colours of their legions with pride, were covered with dirt, ash and dried blood. Now there was only one legion, a legion of the damned.
Howling wind and clouds of ash blew through the empty fields and still-burning streets, a centurion of the Sons of Horus sat atop a crumbling watchtower, his head buried in his hands as he watched over an at-ease patrol of marines below. He couldn’t believe it.
There were suspicions in the back of his mind, ever since Ullanor. Something just wasn’t right. He was there as the legion was renamed, but against his better judgement, he pressed on. He was there as Sejanus fell, and the legion mourned. He was there as Horus himself was struck, and the Imperium fell to its knees. He was there at the lodge meetings, he heard the whispers in dark corners, of changes in the Warmaster, of wrack and ruin to come.
As Torgaddon and Loken had discovered the treacheries of the Word Bearers and the honeyed lies of Erebus, he still held some desperate, denial-fueled hope that these warnings were mere paranoia. It wasn’t until they were sent towards the capital, and he desperately tried to brace the entrance of the Siren Hold against the foul necrophage that tainted the earth itself, that he had finally realized the truth. They were betrayed. Offered as kindling to the pyre of a fraternal war, cast aside as callously as sand thrown to the wind…
But even then, through the screaming, death and chaos, he said nothing. As civilians ran, the corpses of the fallen disintegrated where they fell and the last of the payload was emptied onto the surface of Istvaan III, he stood alone with a single tear running down his cheek, one of the last pillars of peace in the violent end of the capital city. It was much too late by then to try and halt the inevitable.
Slowly, as he sat upon the tower, alone with nothing but his own thoughts, the marine’s sorrow turned to rage. Not the impassioned, fervent sort felt in the din of battle. Something far from it. A cold, bitter hatred. The kind forged over a slowly fading flame, moulded around the inner inferno of anger and hardened by years of weathering. Victory? All but the most optimistic among them has given up on any hope of such things a long time ago. All that they could hope for now was vengeance. Protracted, bloody vengeance. As his former comrades so said, kill for the living, kill for the dead…
Suddenly, his grieving was interrupted by the buzzing of the vox system of his helm.
“This is Praetor Mydaiel”, a dour voice crackled through the channel, “We’re pinned by the southeast hab-spire in your sector! Muster whoever you can! We need support!”
“Of course… And what of the civilians?”
“Dead.”, the praetor muttered blankly, his reply almost muted by the sound of gunfire.
“Show me an army”, the centurion replied, his anger barely constrained behind his rasping, tired tone, “and I shall show you a slaughter...”
He rose to his feet, assured himself that all his trusted equipment was in place with a glance around the room, and bolted down the watchtower elevator shaft with a single leap. The marine paused for a moment, his scarred lips curling into a small frown as he unhooked a large and rusted metal cylinder from the mag-lock on his thigh. A phosphex bomb, perhaps the most tainted weapon in the armories of the Imperium. An alchemical abomination, sure to lay waste to anything within its grasp. His former brothers had laid waste to this land, and it was time for them to taste the same suffering that they themselves had caused.
The centurion ducked through the stone archway of the tower and into the streets of the capital, he was met by two dozen marines and a half-platoon of auxilia in total, inspecting their equipment as they sat perched atop a half-functioning Land Raider. The bottom dregs of the underhive slum-gangs and fanciful scions of feudal world nobility, and all things between. Sons of Terra, of Cthonia, of Barbarus, of Bodt and Chemos both, and of the thousands of other worlds under the banner of the Imperium. But above all, they were the defenders of humanity, and their duty is to die standing.
“Ahem!”, the centurion cleared his throat, “We’re needed in the eastern spires! These traitorous scum, these half-men we once called brothers… They wish to see our end? Show them theirs. Show it in steel and in blood! STRIKE FIRST! CUT THEM DOWN! SHOW THEM THE WRATH OF TRUE SONS OF THE IMPERIUM! RISE HIGH THE BANNERS OF VENGEANCE, FOR NOW IS OUR TIME!”
“AVE!”, the squadron replied, almost in unison. In mere moments, they managed to prepare themselves. Each attuned to the same vox channel, each with their weapons loaded, and all prepared prepared to fight, to bring vengeance for each battle-brother and citizen of the Imperium lost. The fallen whose blood stained the very ground they stood on.
Each were broken in body, but behind their shells of ash-covered armour and tired eyes, the limitless wrath of humanity blazed as brightly as ever. With a single gesture from the centurion, they swept eastward through the empty, firestorm-wracked streets and fields of scorched earth. They had all done this many times before, and this time certainly wouldn’t be the last. They may never return home again, they may be forgotten, but their actions will echo through eternity. They had nothing to lose and everything to gain, for all had already been taken from them and for every one of them that fell, there would be retribution tenfold, tithed in the blood of traitors.
Only due to the sacrifice of Captain Saul Tarvitz of the Emperor’s Children did anything survive, hidden deep within the spires and tunnels of the world as the bombs fell, annihilating any other traces of life, rotting the world’s inhabitants into nothing but decaying sludge and bone, before covering the world in great storms of flame with a single lance blast. Cities were left charred husks, and the dying screams of billions echoed through the Empyrean. Even a number of unfortunate Astartes and civilians who had made it to shelter died in agony, having brought the life-eating necrophage with them into the bunkers.
Upon receiving news of Tarvitz’s plan and the survivors, the Red Angel himself, Angron, ordered his legion to mobilize for a ground assault in a fit of blind rage. Or, perhaps, out of the desire to give his sons an honourable death. Whatever reason the primarch had, it didn’t matter anymore.
Under the blazing and cruel sun of the dead world, the survivors lay inside makeshift trenches and the rubble-strewn buildings of the capital, Khry Vanak. Legionnaires, soldiers and a scattered handful of lost, terrified civilians, left broken and battered. With Astartes emerging from their shelters after the firestorms had subsided, the legion vox channels crackled to life, demanding answers, screaming towards the skies and raging in futility against the very gods themselves. But as soon as the remnants had begun to organize themselves, a rain came, a rain of steel and ceramite, tumbling down towards the earth. The loyalists knew their end was upon them.
Exiting their drop pods, gripped by frenzy and madness, the Eaters of Worlds charged towards their former comrades across the ashen wastes they had laid to ruin, with the Red Angel himself at the front of the assault, his chainaxes emitting guttural roars from their engines in anticipation for the coming battle.
As the charging berserkers finally reached the storm-wracked ruins of the capital, the response was similarly savage. No quarter was asked, and none was given. What little weapon emplacements the desperate loyalists had were used to their full effect, cutting down the first wave of World Eaters in a hail of lascannon beams, splinter shells and boltgun fire. But in the end, though their defense was valiant, the numbers of the traitors were simply too great, and they broke through the front lines in a hail of whirring steel, their once shining white armour now stained with the blood of their former brothers.
Eventually however, the tide was turned. Under the exemplary leadership of Saul Tarvitz and the legendary commander Garviel Loken, and with the brave sacrifice of Captain Ehrlen of the World Eaters, the loyalist forces had managed to scatter the traitors in the corpse-strewn streets of the capital. While squads of World Eaters still scoured the streets, searching for more foes to sate their endless bloodlust, they were disorganized, and allowed the loyalists a brief moment of respite.
Waiting in his battle barge far above the world, Horus seethed in his command bridge, the shadows of the ship obscuring his furled, wrinkled brow. His plan was in ruins. For a brief moment, the arch-traitor simply considered cutting his losses and bombing Angron and his sons into dust alongside the loyalists, but having the World Eater fleet turn on him was a loss he simply could not afford. So, attempting to turn the failings of his brother into a success, Horus ordered a full-scale ground assault on the capital.
-----
After weeks of fighting and desperate scavenging for whatever supplies were left, their armour and clothing, formerly showing the colours of their legions with pride, were covered with dirt, ash and dried blood. Now there was only one legion, a legion of the damned.
Howling wind and clouds of ash blew through the empty fields and still-burning streets, a centurion of the Sons of Horus sat atop a crumbling watchtower, his head buried in his hands as he watched over an at-ease patrol of marines below. He couldn’t believe it.
There were suspicions in the back of his mind, ever since Ullanor. Something just wasn’t right. He was there as the legion was renamed, but against his better judgement, he pressed on. He was there as Sejanus fell, and the legion mourned. He was there as Horus himself was struck, and the Imperium fell to its knees. He was there at the lodge meetings, he heard the whispers in dark corners, of changes in the Warmaster, of wrack and ruin to come.
As Torgaddon and Loken had discovered the treacheries of the Word Bearers and the honeyed lies of Erebus, he still held some desperate, denial-fueled hope that these warnings were mere paranoia. It wasn’t until they were sent towards the capital, and he desperately tried to brace the entrance of the Siren Hold against the foul necrophage that tainted the earth itself, that he had finally realized the truth. They were betrayed. Offered as kindling to the pyre of a fraternal war, cast aside as callously as sand thrown to the wind…
But even then, through the screaming, death and chaos, he said nothing. As civilians ran, the corpses of the fallen disintegrated where they fell and the last of the payload was emptied onto the surface of Istvaan III, he stood alone with a single tear running down his cheek, one of the last pillars of peace in the violent end of the capital city. It was much too late by then to try and halt the inevitable.
Slowly, as he sat upon the tower, alone with nothing but his own thoughts, the marine’s sorrow turned to rage. Not the impassioned, fervent sort felt in the din of battle. Something far from it. A cold, bitter hatred. The kind forged over a slowly fading flame, moulded around the inner inferno of anger and hardened by years of weathering. Victory? All but the most optimistic among them has given up on any hope of such things a long time ago. All that they could hope for now was vengeance. Protracted, bloody vengeance. As his former comrades so said, kill for the living, kill for the dead…
Suddenly, his grieving was interrupted by the buzzing of the vox system of his helm.
“This is Praetor Mydaiel”, a dour voice crackled through the channel, “We’re pinned by the southeast hab-spire in your sector! Muster whoever you can! We need support!”
“Of course… And what of the civilians?”
“Dead.”, the praetor muttered blankly, his reply almost muted by the sound of gunfire.
“Show me an army”, the centurion replied, his anger barely constrained behind his rasping, tired tone, “and I shall show you a slaughter...”
He rose to his feet, assured himself that all his trusted equipment was in place with a glance around the room, and bolted down the watchtower elevator shaft with a single leap. The marine paused for a moment, his scarred lips curling into a small frown as he unhooked a large and rusted metal cylinder from the mag-lock on his thigh. A phosphex bomb, perhaps the most tainted weapon in the armories of the Imperium. An alchemical abomination, sure to lay waste to anything within its grasp. His former brothers had laid waste to this land, and it was time for them to taste the same suffering that they themselves had caused.
The centurion ducked through the stone archway of the tower and into the streets of the capital, he was met by two dozen marines and a half-platoon of auxilia in total, inspecting their equipment as they sat perched atop a half-functioning Land Raider. The bottom dregs of the underhive slum-gangs and fanciful scions of feudal world nobility, and all things between. Sons of Terra, of Cthonia, of Barbarus, of Bodt and Chemos both, and of the thousands of other worlds under the banner of the Imperium. But above all, they were the defenders of humanity, and their duty is to die standing.
“Ahem!”, the centurion cleared his throat, “We’re needed in the eastern spires! These traitorous scum, these half-men we once called brothers… They wish to see our end? Show them theirs. Show it in steel and in blood! STRIKE FIRST! CUT THEM DOWN! SHOW THEM THE WRATH OF TRUE SONS OF THE IMPERIUM! RISE HIGH THE BANNERS OF VENGEANCE, FOR NOW IS OUR TIME!”
“AVE!”, the squadron replied, almost in unison. In mere moments, they managed to prepare themselves. Each attuned to the same vox channel, each with their weapons loaded, and all prepared prepared to fight, to bring vengeance for each battle-brother and citizen of the Imperium lost. The fallen whose blood stained the very ground they stood on.
Each were broken in body, but behind their shells of ash-covered armour and tired eyes, the limitless wrath of humanity blazed as brightly as ever. With a single gesture from the centurion, they swept eastward through the empty, firestorm-wracked streets and fields of scorched earth. They had all done this many times before, and this time certainly wouldn’t be the last. They may never return home again, they may be forgotten, but their actions will echo through eternity. They had nothing to lose and everything to gain, for all had already been taken from them and for every one of them that fell, there would be retribution tenfold, tithed in the blood of traitors.