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***
All of the Kingsguard on the left side of the aircraft slammed their heads hard into the side of their transport.
"Dammit!" the sergeant shouted as the valkyrie slammed the other direction, giving the right side their chance to have their heads bashed into the wall.
The valkyrie desperately bucked and weaved as the gale force crosswinds of the storm slammed into it. Lightning flashed into the cabin, glinting off of the helmets of the stormtroopers as they sat strapped into their seats. Another blast of wind hit the aircraft from the side, causing the valkyrie to flip up onto its side, flailing like a kite without a tether. The engines screamed as the aircraft began to list, one wing pointed towards the ground, while the other pointed up into the insanity of the rushing clouds around them.
The sergeant looked up at his men across the aisle from him as they all started to become weightless. The moment stretched into infinity as the valkyrie began to slowly sink on its side.
With inhuman effort, the pilot blasted the throttle and slammed the wing flaps. Slowly and painfully, the freefalling vehicle arced over onto its back. With the new profile of the wings, the crosswind suddenly died out against the side of the valkyrie. The kingsguard sat upside down in the darkness as their transport began to plummet. As the wings passed over the plane of the wind, suddenly the aircraft flipped over with a violent jerk, completing the barrel roll.
One of the stormtroopers flipped open his visor and promptly lost his lunch. The sergeant could only take comfort in the fact that it splashed on the floor, now correctly returned to "down".
"Dammit," the sergeant thought to himself this time.
He could feel the valkyrie lurch out from underneath him.
Lightning once again lit up the cabin.
"Leave it to the ground units to screw this up," the sergeant thought, seething. In all the months of fighting, this mission was, by far, the most crucial. The relic had to be retrieved at any and all costs. Regular infantry had scoured the area, and had sent back several sightings. That meant that almost all of them were false positives. Perhaps ALL of them were false positives. Leave it to ground units to screw up something of this much importance.
He was forced to begrudgingly admit that this was the price to pay for all the secrecy. Not that they could actually tell the regulars any of what was really going on. Some things were too important to be left to mere soldiers.
The valkyrie slammed into more turbulence, causing the aircraft to groan and rattle as if it were just one more solid shock from completely disintegrating and sending them all hurtling to their deaths.
The sergeant took a moment to consider what it would be like if Foleran forces were ALL Kingsguardsmen. Unfortunately, it was unlikely to be. Just too many men were needed, and they would never have enough to what had to be done if they only gave weapons and armor to those who made the cut.
"Necessary evils," he muttered to himself as the transport rocked violently in the storm.
Then, suddenly, the valkyrie jerked forward. At first, the stormtroopers just assumed more turbulence, but after a moment it became clear. They were actually going somewhere now.
Instead of getting buffeted around in every direction, now it was always on a plane relative to their forward momentum. Soon the vehicle was rocking back and forth, threatening to flip over into another barrel roll at the slightest provocation.
More lightning flashed, reflecting off the solid sheet of water covering the speeding aircraft, and then again.
Moments began to stretch out as the stormtroopers awaited their order to disembark. As they waited, their transport was slowly losing altitude, and the turbulence began to subside from heart-stoppingly lethal to merely catastrophically awful.
The stormtrooper sergeant began to un-tense slightly as the floor crashed up beneath him, causing his carapace armor to slam into the rigid protection covering his knees. He felt that it would be a personal shame to get this far just to die in a vehicle crash.
With a sudden brightening, the valkyrie dropped out of the clouds. The flier careened through the torrent of rain as the ground just began to come into view. It was only a few hundred feet below them.
The aircraft jittered and trembled as it flew through the rain, as if the aircraft itself had just had a near-death experience and was now merely twitching with adrenaline.
They could now see the water as it ran down the tiny windows in heavy sheets. The clouds had gone from an impenetrable black to a light grey backdrop.
After a few more minutes, the red light went on in the cabin. Finally, someone somewhere had found something. Or maybe they hadn't. The only thing he could tell for certain was that he no longer had to fear dying in a crash, at least, not for now.
The stormtroopers instinctively released themselves from their harnesses and quickly began to rise from their seats. The light clicking of the hooks snagging the belays was barely audible above the horrible shaking of the aircraft as it began to make its approach.
The ground sped up to meet them. With a whining groan, the giant door in front of him began to slowly open. The wind blasted into the cabin, spraying rain water everywhere. The ground raced away from them. They were now merely a few dozen feet above it now. Trees and the occasional ruin whipped by before instantly becoming obscured in the downpour.
This was it. They were ready to go.
The valkyrie banked to the right, causing the world outside of the vehicle to tilt as more water sprayed into the stormtroopers. Slowly, the vehicle corrected itself.
There! That was it! They had found the enemy.
They disappeared from view as quickly as they arrived. The valkyrie made another sharp bank to the right, looping around and cutting its throttle. Another valkyrie quickly flew in and out of view as their aircraft continued its turn.
Then it happened, just like it had happened a dozen times before. The valkyrie suddenly cut its thrust and hammered forward the wing flaps. The vehicle dropped a dozen feet and tilted backwards. Silently, the stormtroopers jumped out, their repelling lines whirring as the soldiers fell to the ground. As trained, they slowed themselves at the last possible moment, and unhooked themselves to fall the last few feet as the valkyrie above them slammed back on the throttle and shot up into the sky.
They were here. The Kingsguard was everywhere.
In front of them, the enemy implacably advanced.
The sergeant gave the order to open fire.
The flame throwers quickly lit up, spraying a fan of burning fuel into the enemy in front of them. The large black shapes emerged from the flames unphased, marching forward oblivious to the fire around them, shining off their armor. The sergeant lifted his hellgun and fired into the nearest of the enemy. Shot after shot slammed into it.
The hail of lasfire punched through even their heavy, arcane armor. Bits of metal and blood began to spurt out as the shots slammed into them, filling the enemy warriors with holes.
Still they advanced, impervious to their pain. The sergeant shouted and the flame throwers continued to launch fire at full spray. Rather than fanning out, they were now choosing targets and blasting their burning fuel at individual targets.
Completely engulfed in splashing fire, the enemy began to pick up speed, completely immune to the effects of the stormtroopers. The Kingsguard began to panic slightly as their weapons had no effect. One of the flame throwers and then the other ran out of fuel in their primary tanks. The enemy stood before them, armor black and smouldering, the red light pouring out of sable helmets adorned with charred horns.
And then they were on them.
The stormtroopers pulled out combat knives. The enemy marines hefted massive chainswords.
The fight quickly devolved into a bloody melee as the screaming spinning of teeth gouged into carapace armor while the quick knives of the Kingsguard desperately tried to find weak points in the armor of their enemies.
The sergeant looked in front of them. There towered the enemy aspiring champion, his power sword flicking crackling energy from its ancient disruptor field. Its armor still smoked as the last of the burning fuel dripped off its uncaring form. The enemy seethed through his rebreather.
"I will... consume... you," it hissed through its black helmet.
With inhuman strength, the champion swung his sword at the stormtrooper, the air screeching as it was rent by the unholy power of the blade. The stormtrooper sergeant quickly backed away from the arcing power weapon, and then again as the champion reversed, leaving an oily streak in the air mere inches in front of his face. The sergeant grabbed for the sword arm. The champion jerked back and then came forward, slamming his gauntleted fist ensheathed in the great weapon's pommel guard straight into the sergeant's helmet.
Disoriented, the sergeant once again only dodged instant death by a fraction of a second. He quickly wrenched his now useless helmet free and stared at his foe, rain pouring into his face.
With another wide arc, the champion was upon him, the air snapping around him at the power of the blade. The sergeant lunged forward, planting his boot on the top of the champion's foot, and then slamming himself up and in. His nine inch blade rammed into the gap between the helmet and the breastplate, punching underneath the rebreather and up into the champion's skull.
Thick black blood began to spurt out, running down the blade and whipping in the wind. The sergeant stared at his enemy for a brief moment.
Then he felt a grasping hand on his side. The sergeant looked down as the champion lifted him single-handed off the ground, up and away from him. A seething chuckle gurgled out from its black armor. The horrible armored thing dropped its power weapon and reached for its throat. With a long, sick slide, a gauntleted fist reached for the knife handle and began to pull it out. As the end of the blade cleared, blood began to gush out the bottom of the helmet.
The sergeant squirmed against the awesome might of the dark champion. It looked down at the blade, lifted it up, and stabbed down, embedding the knife through the sergeant's neck and down into his torso. The stormtrooper tried to scream in agony.
With inhuman strength, it brought the knife down, sending out a sick, serrating crack as the blade crushed through his sternum, cracking and snapping all of his ribs one by one as the blade was slowly yet powerfully drawn down. Blood gushed up from underneath his carapace armor, staining the brown red, and splashing his remaining life down onto the black power armor of the champion's, mingling with the beast's own as it continued to pour out of its helmet.
The champion let go of its vice grip on the sergeant, allowing his body to flop to the ground, writhing as it struggled for the last few, blood-drowned breaths it would take.
The rain poured down on them, cascading blood and water everywhere.
With a gurgling grunt, the champion fell to one knee over the corpse he had just created. The sound of the other marines fighting the stormtroopers swirled around it, as the rain pattered off of its armor.
He was still.
And then he began to tremble. Reality itself began to shimmer and shy away. From within the champion's helmet, words began to gurgle out. Blood was pouring out of its helmet like a faucet. Its armor streaked as the chanting grew louder and louder.
The voice was no longer his.
The deluge of water from the storm around them began to twist and warp to avoid falling on the champion. Everywhere nature began to recoil in horror. The champion stood up. The blood from his helmet began to slow to a trickle. The last few drops spattered on the front of his armor.
And then the world collapsed on itself. With a sudden blast of light, the warp ripped open a hole in the fabric of existence. The champion was completely consumed in the empyrian blast, its armor flinging through the air as the terrors of the immaterium seared the air around him.
With a great, heaving retch, the warp vomited itself violently into the real world. It throbbed and pulsed as it heaved more and more in. The
raw essence oozed out of the wound in a spray of light and death.
The stormtroopers and marines alike recoiled from the awesome power evolving in front of them. Beyond, some unseen power twisted and broke the nature of the universe, crushing it to its will, building the power up into something unseeable. Unknowable.
As the light began to fade, it stood before them.
It had been brought to being at last.
The mighty demon was temporarily disoriented by the transition, but quickly shook its pallid form, flicking water off of its head and shoulders as the skies continued to pour down overhead.
It looked down at the mortal warriors before it. It seethed malice as much as it did contempt.
The stormtroopers broke and began to run.
With speed given to it by the unholy power of the warp, the beast was first here, and then there. A second later, a stormtrooper exploded from the inside out, while almost simultaneously a second was ripped in half by the mighty monster.
The stormtroopers cried out as they were systematically slaughtered.
The demon turned and looked at those following him. The other marines bent down at the knee, their armor splashing in the mud. The demon could feel their worship now. Its god was pleased. So was it.
"I am ascended," the demon hissed, "Let us... feed..."
The marines behind it rose to their knees, and began to charge forward after it.
As they approached a ruin, the guns of a nearby enemy army opened up at it from point-blank range. Lasgun shots hissed as they punctured its immaterial hide.
A few enemy walkers arrived, charging in towards them.
Their pathetic laser cannons sloughed off of the mighty demon as he strode towards the guardsmen in the ruins.
The survivors of another squad of marines raced up behind them. They threw themselves at the walkers, breaking open a hole for the demon to charge straight through.
They broke into the guardsmen.
The doom of these pathetic mortals was neigh.
***
Melchoir struggled to keep up. His equipment was heavy and waterlogged. The rain had turned the ground into earth soup.
He scrabbled over some defensive works that the priest had managed to clear in a single bound. Sanario seemed to have some sort of mad energy driving him forward through the storm.
"Stop!" Melchoir pleaded as he made it over a barricade and into a ruin.
The priest stopped in mid-stride and turned to look at the officer. He looked up over him. By now, they had lost most of those following him in the storm. Only a few handfuls were straggling behind them, and they looked even more desperate to catch up with him than Melchoir did.
Sanario grunted as he jumped forward into the ruins. He couldn't very well accomplish his task without an army. The priest winced. That was exactly the kind of reasoning that Melchoir would have put forward. Perhaps he had gone weak and mushy after all of his exposure to the officer's endless contrivances.
Melchoir caught up with him, hopelessly out of breath. He collapsed under the remains of the ruin's second floor.
The priest calmly, but impatiently waited for the rest of his followers to continue their approach.
The miserable soldiers made it over the defensive positions and up into the ruin behind him.
"Very good!" Sanario shouted, "Continue!"
"No, wait!" Melchoir shouted, "We need to rest. We haven't eaten, or stopped, and we're soaking through."
"We have no time for this, Melchoir," the priest replied sternly.
"This is madness, Sanario!" the officer protested, "We're never going to make it anywhere in this condition, much less with the strength to fight anything."
"We will press on!" the priest commanded.
The officer could barely withstand Sanario's intimidating presence.
The storm howled around them, dumping an endless stream of rain into the guardsmen, freezing them to the core. One of the guardsmen at the front of the group dropped to the ground, succumbing to the elements and the hours of forced march there through. His unconscious body splashed into the mud. Nearby guardsmen struggled to prop him back up again.
The few of them who remained were fatigued to the point of utter collapse.
"Men!" the priest bellowed over the storm, "You have endured many hardships. You have fought and struggled and labored greatly. Yet you have endured! You have trained and marched and died. Yet you are strong! You here have done the impossible. By your own will and by the indomitable spirit of the God-Emperor you have made it here, to this place, right now!"
"I tell you, men of Folera!" he continued as the storm blasted around him, cracking lightning into the air, "I tell you now, that all you have strived for, all that you have done and experienced, it all comes down to this! It all comes down to right now! Whatever you feel now. However hungry. However weary. However wet. Now is the time, men! Now is the time when you show the enemies of all that is holy of what stuff you are made!"
From somewhere in front of them, gunfire began to erupt. An explosion blasted out nearby through the driving rain.
"Now, before you is the one final challenge! Now is the time to vindicate everything you have done here! Now come on, men! Let's finish this, once and for all!"
The desperate guardsmen huddled in the rain, all but unable to take another step forward. Slowly, they began to stir as the rain poured around them. Weak and out of breath, they began to prepare for battle.
"They're here!" someone shouted, sending the exhausted guardsmen scurrying the best they could. Melchoir and Sanario looked around, but could see nothing through the wall.
Lasgun fire instantly erupted above them and from other guardsmen.
"Come now, Melchoir," the priest intoned, "It is time."
Melchoir started up his power fist. It took the waterlogged engine a few tries to be able to get going. The priest lifted his chainsword and revved it, water flinging off of the whirring blade. He took a deep breath and spun around the wall of the ruin. The officer ran in after him.
The priest let loose a wide horizontal swing of his sword before he had even cleared the corner. The enemy marine on the other side was caught completely by surprise as the ten foot long chainsaw sword came at him in a wide horizontal arc and slammed into him just as the wielder came into view.
Clotheslined by the spinning blade, the enemy was knocked up into the air as the weapon serrated straight through his powered armor and eviscerated the flesh inside. Sparks flew as steel burrowed through steel as the mighty weapon plowed through the other side, chopping the marine clean in half.
As the priest rounded the corner, he saw more of the enemy. With a great shout, he lifted his spinning blade. The nearest enemy tried to shoot him with his bolt gun, but the few poorly-aimed shots bounced off his rosarius field. With a massive downswing, the priest brought his eviscerator down onto the marine, slamming into his shoulder. With a horrifying screech, the eviscerator slowly sliced through the marine down diagonally across its torso. Its power pack exploded as the chainsword finished through with a final surge, cleaving the marine in half, and spraying gore everywhere.
A third marine approached him with its own chainsword. Sanario quickly dodged out of the way. Unable to lift his eviscerator in time, he brought it up parallel to the ground and charged. The front of the blade punched into the marine, and the force of the priest's thrust knocked him back. Sanario lunged after him, pinning the marine against the wall of the ruin. The tip of the eviscerator groaned loudly as just the front teeth battered the marine's armor.
The enemy took a swing at the priest, but the length of his arm and chainsword were just shy of being able to reach. Sanario screamed and threw all of his weight into his sword. Sparks flew as the tip of the eviscerator ground itself slowly into his enemy. The marine began to twitch violently as the massive blade ground its way into his body.
With a shout, the blade gave way, punching clean through his enemy, and the ruined wall behind him. The blade picked back up to full speed as blood and bits of wall sprayed into the ruin. Sanario lurched backwards, the blade eviscerating the marine as several feet of it passed back through its body.
The blade completely withdrew. With a quick arcing strike, Sanario lopped his enemy's head off.
There was screaming and shouting everywhere. The priest's breath heaved in his chest as water poured down his face.
He looked at Melchoir.
"Come on!" he shouted, lifting his chainsaw sword into the air. He revved it violently as he turned to run back around the ruin.
They were gone.
Before the priest was strewn about dozens of corpses. Dead guardsmen heaped on each other in piles.
"What?" Melchoir was able to choke out.
Where before were a hundred guardsmen were now a few desperate survivors, and a field of blood.
The enemy was pouring towards them.
Sanario looked up. The gale blew his hair into his face. There was it, in front of him.
A great demon prince, slaughtering over the remainder of all those who had followed him.
"So, this is it at last!" Sanario shouted.
"What!?" Melchoir cried over the storm.
The priest looked at the officer.
"You know what must be done, Melchoir."
Sanario turned and charged towards the demon.
The priest charged forwards, the officer coming up behind him. They struggled forward through the mud and through the rain, and through the blood. They could barely keep their footing as they charged towards the demon, who with a large swipe of its gigantic claws killed three guardsmen at a swipe, sending them flying into the air.
Enemy gunfire began to shoot at them through the storm. The wind all but knocked them off their feet.
Finally, they made it up to the hellish beast, towering over them. It turned as the priest rushed in.
"Foul demon of the empyrian abyss!" Sanario shouted with all of this strength.
The demon twisted and glared down at the priest, sniffing at the air.
"I have come for you!" the priest shouted again.
The demon looked at Sanario, almost as if the towering thing recognized the priest.
"Ar'Yleh!" the demon choked out, the word all but sticking in its gullet.
"I am the light of the Emperor! I wield the eternal light, bane against the darkness!"
The demon finally made a move towards the priest. A twisted smile seemed to stretch across its face. Melchoir stood stunned in terror.
With lightning speed, the demon moved, left and right as if at the same time. With equally blinding reflexes, the priest struck his blade over. A shower of sparks flew into the air as the demon's powerful attacks crashed into the priest's force field. The priest dodged down and to the left, bringing up his blade to block.
Another thunderous blast cascaded around them as the demon struck again. The air pierced with an ear-splitting shreik, as the demon recoiled its claw from the priest, etherial fire pouring from a wound in its hand.
"I am a knight of Folera!" Sanario shouted, "I am the hand of the king!"
The demon struck in again with blinding speed, twisting and bending the air around him as he lunged in for the attack. The priest was knocked to his feet in a massive display of light and power as his faith and his refractor kept his body whole. He sprung up to a squat and sent his eviscerator after the creature's legs. The demon quickly skirted out of the way and attacked again, just barely missing Sanario as he rolled out from under it.
Sanario swung up underneath it, the spinning teeth of the blade skipping off of the beast's unnatural hide. The demon had already turned around. Its hammering blow was averted at the last moment as the priest raised his eviscerator to block.
The demon got in with its other claw. The rosarius shreiked as the demon's claw wrapped around the priest and lifted him into the air. Everywhere sparks showered down with the rain as the demon's hand began to warp and strain under the rosarius field. Sanario struggled, and lifted his eviscerator up.
He brought it down with all of his might onto the demon's head. The great spinning blade slammed into the creature of the warp. The beast roared as the blade bit hard into its corporeal form, the spinning teeth gouging into its face.
Sanario lifted his blade again and chopped down.
The demon reached up and caught the blade. A horrifying screech pierced the air as the mighty blade ground into the demon's hand. Warpflame erupted and sent unholy fire spraying out against the dying light of the failing rosarius. The beast yowled its murderous scream. With little effort, it twisted its ruined hand. The eviscerator flipped out of Sanario's grasp and splashed into the mud in front of Melchoir.
Sanario desperately began to pound into the demon with his fists. His reserve longsword pinned against his body by the demon's grasping claws.
The monster turned and flicked Sanario into the ruins. With near lethal force, the priest collided with the wall. His rosarius field gave its last, and winked out of existence in a pitiful display of energy. Sanario collapsed to the ground.
Above him towered the demon. The monstrous creature pinned the priest to the ground under its enormous taloned foot.
It sniffed the air again, turning to look at Melchoir. He stood agape as the demon prince stared at him.
With a piercing yowl, the demon prince let out its unhuman roar. Sanario had managed to free his other blade.
The heavens opened up another clash of lighting.
He couldn't take it any more.
Melchoir ran.
***
