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***
A cold breeze wafted in after the storm, dissipating the heavy fog, and casting a few fleeting rays of sunlight streaming down between the cracks in the overcast sky.
"Completely alone?" one of the conscripts asked in wonder.
"No, not completely alone. I had the God-Emperor in my heart, and the king of Folera in my arms. I would need them both for this righteous action. Otherwise, though, yes, it was just me against the entire xenos horde left in the ruin," Sanario replied.
"The xenos had a flying vehicle as well," the priest continued, "and it had a long-range weapon borne down on me. And it was flying sideways too, nearly impossible to track. Well, impossible to track without an associate's education in mathematics and ballistics. I looked at the vehicle, and was able to estimate its speed and direction, skills learned while hunting carniverous dolorax pods while saving Councilmember Throud of Naxis III, but that's a different story.
Anyways, I was able to calculate in my mind where the vehicle was, and charged forward. The xenos opened fire, but they couldn't keep up with me as I ran forward, shouting the litanies of the Emperor, eviscerator hefted high into the air. The vehicle tried to change course at the last second, but it was too slow for me. I lept up onto the foul thing and caught it mid-air, my whirring blade coming down in a great stroke. Sparks and metal flew everywhere as I chopped the whole front of it off. The great thing collapsed into the ground and I swung at it again, carving off a great slice of its armor, peeling back the cockpit and staring face to face against the xeno inside."
The conscripts stared at him, entranced. "Then what did you do?" one of them asked.
"I reached in and plucked the hapless foe from his vehicle, and told him 'In the name of the ruler of all the stars, I sentence you to death!' and then I threw him up into the air and cut him in half with my chainsaw sword before he hit the ground. His screams and gore were shed in an attempt to atone for his sins, but he would find no forgiveness."
"Then what did you do?"
"Sanario!" came the voice of Melchoir.
"Ah, well, I will have to tell you later. My duty calls me now."
"The Emperor be with you," one of them called out to him as he turned to leave.
"And also with you, always," the priest replied before making it over to Melchoir's command post.
The officer was looking better. Not only has the rain and the mist finally abated, but he now finally knew where he was, and what was going on.
"We're getting reinforcements," the officer stated joyfully, "All we've got to do is hold out here, and they'll come on in."
"How goes it everywhere else?" the priest inquired.
"Well, well. We've got the entire enemy position nearly surrounded. We actually managed to get ahead of everyone else, and so we've got to wait for the rest of them to catch up."
The priest rolled his eyes.
"I know," Melchoir replied, "but we're pretty exposed out here, so we can't be too careful. Now that the weather is clearing up, I think we should expect a counterattack at -"
"Marshal!" came a shout of alarm "Contact with the enemy!"
"Engage at will!" the officer shouted. Immediately the company's lascannons started to bark into action, picking out targets across the field and in the ruins.
"Now that we've got some co-ordinates," Melchoir began, speaking to his artillery spotter, "let's get some supporting fire in here."
The spotter flicked on his long-wave vox. "Gamma Leman to Firefly base. Over. Request fire mission grid B-17, repeat, B-17. Mark 3. Mark 3."
"Firefly base fire mission B-17-3. Confirmed," came the faded, whiny voice from the vox set.
"Sir? Sir!"
"What?" asked Melchoir, turning to his lascannon team.
"Our weapon... has no effect!"
"What!?"
"Look!"
The lascannon gunner pointed to a brutish monster made of metal and flesh up in a ruin. With a blinding flash, the cannon blasted a shot upfield. The shot hit the beast square in the chest. It didn't even seem to notice.
"What!?" Melchoir shouted again. That lascannon could have punched through a bunker with ease, but it couldn't even hurt the enemy?
"What kind of monster is-"
The officer was interrupted by a shreiking noise creeping in from overhead. He barely had time to duck himself before a cascade of poorly-aimed artillery slammed into the ground in front of them. The blast heaved dirt and debris up into the air in a set of massive explosions, blanketing the nearby guardsmen with dust and flying rocks.
The officer instinctively flinched as the shockwaves of the falling rounds knocked into him. The priest stood upright, almost daring the shells to land closer.
The dust and smoke wafted away on the breeze, blowing over the guardsmen as it departed. Melchoir uncrouched and looked at where the enemy had been advancing. They were gone.
"Well, looks like they've run off?" Melchoir said, uncertainly, "Was this just a scouting party?"
Sanario frowned. He didn't think so.
***
The stormtrooper sergeant bent down to look at the rocky soil. His breath pounded in his chest. His muscles seared in pain. The few Kingsguardsmen he still had the privilege of leading had been running in their heavy gear for miles.
This spot was a little muddier than the ones around it. He lightly swept his hand across the grass, rapidly moving his sharp eyes over the dirt and gravel before him. He was searching for any sign. Then he spotted it.
"Here we go," the sergeant exclaimed, out of breath. He pointed at the part of a massive bootprint dug into the soft soil. He turned and looked at the stormtrooper behind him, still squatting on the ground. "We've almost got them. Come on, boys," he said, getting back up.
The stromtroopers behind him all started off at a slow jog. They all hurt as much as he did, but they were trained, and trained hard, to be nearly impervious to physical hardship. At least he no longer needed to track his quarry through the fog.
They could see the ruins of a small outpost ahead of them. As they made their way up the hill, they could start to hear gunfire. That wasn't right, there shouldn't be any forces this far forward yet. It certainly did sound like lascannon and lasgun fire, though.
They made it to the top of the hill when suddenly they were face to face with the enemy.
There, they had finally caught up. The stormtroopers prepared to fire into their unsuspecting prey.
Suddenly a piercing shriek filled the air.
"INCOM-"
A massive explosion blasted in front of the stormtroopers instantly knocking them flat on the ground. A massive geyser of dirt and mud erupted in a huge column, followed by a second large blast and a third. The sergeant desperately tried to gather his wits as artillery fell out of the sky almost directly on top of him.
Dirt and debris buried them in an avalanche of earth. He desperately struggled to get free of the few feet of soil thrown at him. It was all he could do to fight off the shock and the awful swimming feeling in his head.
He turned and looked at his squad, which was likewise righting itself as best it could. He looked back forward, and there they were.
The enemy, who apparently hadn't even noticed getting hit by artillery, had turned and seen the stormtroopers. They stopped moving forwards, and instead turned to attack them.
"Incoming enemy!" the stormtrooper sergeant shouted from what sounded like fifty feet away.
As the enemy implacably marched towards them, the two stormtroopers with flame throwers scrambled to set up in front. One of them managed to get off a blast, but the enemy just walked through, apparently unharmed. The sergeant hefted his hellgun and pointed it directly into the face of the enemy marine in front of him. He unloaded with hot-shot lasfire, blowing away a large piece of his helmet and ripping into his skull.
The enemy soldier just kept charging forward, as if nothing had happened.
They were on him.
In a moment's notice, he was standing in front of a massive hulk of armor. Draped on his body were chains inlaid with skulls. Their empty eye sockets wept some sort of sticky fluid onto the black steel. A sudden stench overwhelmed him. His stomach churned as decay incarnate picked him out and charged in.
The sergeant dropped his hellgun and drew out his combat knife, he charged in low and fast, striking in two different places almost simultaneously. The shots bounced harmlessly off of the power armor. The enemy stared down at him with red-colored eyeports in his helmet. He didn't even seem to notice the attacks.
The sergeant ducked in again and struck. This time, the knife buried deep into the flesh of the enemy. As the blade burrowed in, a hot stream of bile shot out, covering his arm in scalding pus. The sergeant stepped back in surprise, but the enemy marine grabbed him with his free arm. The sergeant tried to struggle as he was lifted off the ground like a rag doll.
"No!" the stormtrooper shouted as the enemy lifted him up face to face, trying to writhe as best he could. He looked down into the grotesque horror that stared back at him. The sergeant reached over with his knife and stabbed his foe in the head through his eye. The steel blade sunk in deep.
The enemy, seemingly impervious, reached up with his other hand. The massive gauntlet of a power fist cracked with energy.
"I present to you... a sacrifice..." the marine hissed through his rebreather. With no effort, the power fist wrapped around the stormtrooper, squeezing in with its fingers. The sergeant screamed in horror as his bones began to pop and crush.
With a swift, powerful jerk, the marine pulled up, ripping the stormtrooper sergeant clean in half. Gore and organs splorted out from him, emptying his body cavity onto the marine and splashing blood all over the ground. He let the legs and torso crash to the earth while he held the top half up and let out a howling shout.
The remaining stormtroopers looked on, stunned, as the champion's shout turned into a scream and then into a screech. The marine suddenly started to shutter, dropping the carcass of their sergeant. He shook and seized violently, an aura of power exuding off of his armor, turning the air slick and greasy. Suddenly, with a horrible slopping sound, the champion's armor began to bust off of him. Mutinous flesh pushed out of him, as horns pierced him from the inside out. The last human cries of the space marine began to gargle away as the last of his armor sloughed off of his frame.
Standing before them was a hideous monster. A being of pure chaotic energy.
The stormtroopers stood in their places, rooted to the ground with terror. The new ascendant creature screamed at them, spewing blood and bile from its many-toothed maw.
It had awakened. It needed to feed.
***
Sanario was right to be skeptical. No sooner had the artillery wafted away, then more shouts of alarm broke out amongst the ranks of guardsmen.
From seemingly nowhere, a cloud of flying insects had descended on the entire position. The priest looked, and could see them popping out of thin air. Then, a rift began to form in front of them, swirling chaos overtaking the reality around them. As more insects flew out of the emerging portal, more shapes began to form. Suddenly, reality began to snap back into place, leaving five towering warriors in massive black armor striding out towards their lines.
"Everybody! Shift fire right!" Melchoir shouted towards his group. His troops sprung into action, running to the right and forming up ranks. Meltaguns and lascannons blasted through a huge pile of lasgun fire.
The lasguns hissed and cracked on the surface of their arcane force fields, and pattered helplessly off of their armor. Melchoir looked on in shock. They were immune to small arms fire too. Literally nothing could hurt their enemy. Then, a brave soldier with a meltagun opened fire from mere feet away. The shot exploded the terminator's energy field and quickly began to vaporize the enemy behind, bursting it into flames before what remained oozed into molten slag in front of him.
So they weren't invincible after all.
More gunfire poured into them as they approached. A lascannon took down another from point-blank range. Meanwhile, the conscripts eventually formed up and presented their arms at the command of a nearby officer. At once, they opened up with a truly awesome spray of lasgun fire. The pure amount of energy thrown at the terminator broke through his force field and eventually began to shred its armor. The conscripts kept up their fire until their laspacks began to run empty.
The great icon-bearer collapsed to the ground.
"Keep firing!" Melchoir ordered as the enemy rushed in.
Another meltagunner stood forward and unloaded, causing another terminator to explode in a spray of molten gore and shrapnel. The only one left was the enemy warlord, towering over the guardsmen in a visage of unadulterated malice.
"They're back!" came a shout from a random guardsman. Melchoir jerked around to see the new threat barrel towards them. It was the enemy marines that were hit by artillery, but there were more of them than there were before - two giant creatures striding in front of them.
"Shoot them!" Melchoir desperately replied.
The men opened up with all they had, but their rounds didn't seem to have any effect on their targets. Lascannons shot into one, only to have it bounce off of the monster's etherial shielding. Another unloaded with his meltagun into the most terrifying creature the officer had ever seen. The shot hit, but the creature, though wounded, kept right on coming.
The great armored one lumbered into range of his men and unloaded a great gush of fire, consuming everything nearby in a cloud of oily smoke and charring corpses. Melchoir looked through the flames.
They were on him.
Melchoir began to panic. What was he going to do? What could he do? The invincible enemy sloughed off tens of thousands of shots from his army, and their weapons had no effect. It was useless, he needed to retreat. He needed to have something that could actually hurt their foes. Or maybe he could attack, and take down the enemy somehow by weight of arms. Or maybe he had a different plan. He looked around nervously.
"You know what to do, Melchoir," Sanario spoke in a solid tone, "Now is the time to charge forth and vanquish our enemies."
"Umm..." the officer began, "I don't know if... I think there's... that we..."
"Now is the time, Melchoir. Lead your troops to victory. In the name of the king."
"Umm..."
Screams erupted all around him. On his left, guardsmen were getting literally ripped into pieces by the giant chaos spawn. In front of him, the lumbering chaos monstrosity raked apart one of his officers with a wicked claw-like fist. Behind them, the enemy continued to advance forwards.
The officer turned to his right. There his men were desperately struggling with the enemy warlord.
The giant space marine grabbed one guardsman and used him as a weapon to crush another one, killing both with the massive impact. It turned and effortlessly snapped another one's head off with a backhand from its gauntleted fist. An entire squad was single-handedly ripped apart with no survivors.
He strode up to the next squad as the guardsmen desperately tried to wound it with their lasguns to no avail whatsoever. He reached out a hand and grasped a guardsman. Immediately he started to scream in horrific pain. What looked like a mold or mildew sprouted out from his skin, and quickly raced across the surface of his body. In the blink of an eye, the guardsman's skin was eaten off by fungus, which kept boring into him until nothing was left but moldy bones and floating spores.
The guardsmen began to panic and run as the spores infested them one at a time, causing them to erupt in mildew that quickly overtook their bodies in the most agonizing death imaginable. As they tried to flee, they were bashed apart by the lord, sending bodies flying into the air. The warlord strode up to a third squad, his form invincible against everything. No lasgun, meltagun, lascannon, or bayonet could touch the flesh of the giant, striding forward with contemptuous will.
In front of him, another flame thrower blast, catching even more guardsmen ablaze. His lascannon team took careful aim, and with a point-blank shot, finally managed to end the menace. He looked and saw his conscripts making a valiant stand against the rest of the space marines as they ran forwards into the fight.
"I... I..." Melchoir stuttered. Plans within plans whirled in his mind.
Sanario looked at the officer with pity as the conscripts opened fire.
"Don't worry, I'll handle this."
Sanario turned towards the chaos lord.
"Thou foul creature!" he shouted as the massive bulk in black armor scattered the guardsmen in front of him, "You think your army can assail the forces of the God-Emperor of Mankind? You would boast to prevail? You have scattered the sheep, but now you face the shepherd. You have cast down the iniquitous, but here before you stands a man of righteousness!"
The priest looked back. Slowly but surely, the guardsmen were hacking apart the spawn. Behind the ruin, the conscripts gunned down more space marines. A loud shreik sounded overhead as more artillery pounded down mere feet away from them, landing amidst the conscripts and the remaining space marines.
The earth heaved and shook. The massive explosion blasting noise and debris everywhere.
"But see you now!" Sanario shouted as artillery exploded behind him, "Your army has been beaten, and you have been deserted. Where before you could hide behind your minions, you now are alone, face to face with the servant of the Emperor! It is here and now that I pass my judgement upon you, and you shall suffer the wrath of the righteous no more!"
The lord turned to face the priest. Its eyes smouldered in their sockets. Rot and decay exuded from his wholly evil form.
"Behold! The punishment of evil men is the delight of those who serve His name!"
Sanario lifted his ten foot long chainsaw sword above his head and violently revved the massive spinning blade.
Behind him, the chaos spawn finally began to succumb to its many wounds. The space marines appeared to be running away.
The chaos lord stood still, looking at the priest. A horrible, choking sound emerged from his armor. Fluid began to drip out from under his helmet. The choking became a grating noise.
He was laughing.
Suddenly, the air around him began to ripple and warp. Reality itself bent until it finally began to break. Laughing now at the top of its lungs, the chaos lord began to dissolve into the empyrian abyss whence he came. Behind him erupted another cloud of biting flies and insects that escaped from the warp as it sealed behind him.
Those few guardsmen who had survived, mostly conscripts, began to run in panic as the insects bit and stung them. After a few moments, a frigid breeze blew in scattered them away.
Sanario lowered his sword.
"Hmph," he scowled, "I didn't think so."
***
Melchoir and Sanario sat alone on the hillside. The wind whipped by them as they looked on. They had been careful to choose a place not downwind from the battle.
It had been hopeless. All those who had come near to the chaos lord had broken out in pustules not long after his departure. All those who had been bitten by the insects from the warp saw their flesh begin to decay and to fall off. The panic became more subdued as the diseases took them. Thrashing turned into struggling, which gave way to moans and silent weeping. Eventually they were all dead.
All of them but the priest and the officer. As best they could guess, their refractor fields had kept them safe from the spores and the bugs. They didn't want to risk it, though.
They would have called back to base, but they didn't trust the vox equipment to be free of plague. Instead, they sat on the hillside, looking for their reinforcements. Hopefully they would be able to flag them down and warn them before they got too close. Hopefully they would bring in a hellhound to thoroughly scour the earth of any traces of the disease.
"Thanks," Melchoir muttered as the two stared off into the distance.
The priest remained silent for a moment as the breeze passed by them.
"Place not your faith in the contrivances of man, but in the one who is the source of all might," the priest quoted.
"I wish I could be as sure as that."
The priest continued to stare off.
"Some day. Excellence is a habit, not a possession. In faith, as in all things."
Hopefully their reinforcements would come soon.
***
KHADOR 
X-Wing (Empire Strong) 
