His eyes fell upon the Undying One, less than one hundred metres distant. He had faced the creature once before, and recognised it instantly. Even from this distance, he could make out the spinning orb of the Nexus Arrangement set into its chest plate.
“There!” roared Marduk, levelling his crozius in the direction of the enemy xenos lord.
“Target acquired,” confirmed Kol Badar, his combi-bolter roaring in his hand. “Come, my Anointed brothers! Kill for the living, kill for the dead!”
More than three hundred necron warriors separated the Terminators and the Dreadnought from their target. Thousands more surrounded them. As if being suddenly awoken from their slumber, the necrons turned as one to face the Anointed, and in an instant, battle was joined.
“Death to the betrayer of the crusade!” boomed the Warmonger, reliving once more battle of days past.
Kol Badar snarled as he gunned down necrons, ripping dozens of them to pieces with each concentrated burst of fire.
“Close formation! Keep moving!” he bellowed. Deeper into the enemy formation the Anointed strode, destroying dozens of the xenos machines for each step of ground they gained.
Hot blood pumped through Kol Badar’s veins, his twin hearts hammering in his chest. He closed his power talons around one of the necron’s heads, and with a savage twisting motion ripped it clear. He backhanded another of the xenos automatons, smashing it heavily to the ground. As it struggled to rise, he placed the twin barrels of his combi-bolter against its head and squeezed the trigger.
One of the necrons was lifted off its feet as an Anointed warrior rammed his chainfist into the hapless robotic being’s chest, sending shards of metal spitting out in all directions before it was torn in two. Another was liquefied as combi-melta fire turned its body molten.
Half a dozen of the Anointed were down, felled by the brutally effective gauss weapon fire of the necrons. None of their brethren made any move to aid them. Kol Badar saw more of his battle-brothers, warriors he had fought alongside through countless campaigns spanning the galaxy, fall under the devastating weapons of the necrons. It was horrifyingly effective, even Terminator armour proving to be little protection against their touch. Under each searing volley of crackling energy, armour was stripped away layer by layer, until pallid flesh was exposed and stripped to the bone; a fraction of a second later, and bone too was torn apart at a sub-atomic level.
A beam of energy sliced across his shoulder, cleaving through his armour plating. Kol Badar turned and gunned down his attacker, driving it backwards, only for it to be finished by one of his brethren, who smashed its head from its shoulders with a blow of a power maul.
The Warmonger barrelled through the orderly ranks of the enemy, smashing dozens of the skeletal warriors aside with each sweep of its massive talons. Dozens more were ripped apart as the Warmonger’s heavy bolters tore a swathe through their ranks.
Emotionless and seemingly oblivious to the danger they faced, more necrons moved forward to fill the gaps left by their fallen comrades, stepping into the path of the rampaging Dreadnought. Arcing green beams stabbed at the Warmonger’s armoured hull, ripping gaping holes in his carapace that exposed the Dreadnought’s inner workings, but it was not slowed.
A necron warrior before Kol Badar raised its weapon over its head, bringing the axe-head underslung beneath its barrel down towards his shoulder. The Coryphaus caught the blow in his power talons. He clenched his hand into a fist and the weapon crumpled, ghostly green energy leaping in all direction. He smashed the necron across the side of the head with the barrel of his combi-bolter with a sharp, metallic clang, and then stabbed his bladed talons into its chest.
Crackling with energy, his fingertips passed through the gaps of the necron’s ribcage, and with a flick of his hand he sent the corpse-machine flying.
Death was assured. There was virtually no chance that any of them would make it out alive.
Kol Badar began to laugh. He had not felt this alive in centuries.
Marduk smashed his crozius into the head of a necron, exposing sparking wiring and circuitry as it was sundered by the force of the blow. As the robotic corpse collapsed to the ground, a space was momentarily cleared before him, affording him a glimpse towards his target.
The ancient being of living metal was gliding smoothly towards him and the Anointed and Marduk saw that there was only a thin line of enemy constructs that separated him from his immortal foe.
The warriors that marched before the Undying One were unlike any that he had faced thus far. Their bodies seemed to be an armoured mockery of the living, rather than reflections of death as were the other necrons. They moved differently as well, their movements smooth and natural, more like those a living foe, rather than the stilted movements of the lesser warriors. They were tall and slender, easily matching the height of the Terminator-armoured Anointed, though they were a fraction of their bulk, and in their hands they wielded halberd-like warscythes, their blades flickering with green energy.
The Anointed and the elite bodyguard of the Undying One came together with a crash, energised warscythes meeting power mauls and chainfists. The enemy moved with supple grace, their weapons leaving gleaming contrails in their wake as they were whipped around in blinding arcs.
Those weapons proved utterly deadly, shearing through Terminator armour with ease. Marduk glimpsed one of the Anointed raising a barbed power sword to parry a blow scything in towards its neck, only to see the blade of the power sword neatly sheared away. The energised necron weapon continued on into the body of the veteran Word Bearer, slicing him open from neck to sternum.
Having witnessed the shocking power of the warscythes, Marduk swayed backwards out of the way of a hissing blade rather than attempt to block it. His movement was slowed by the sheer bulk of his newly donned Terminator armour, though not as much as he had initially expected.
Marduk turned aside the next blow aimed at him, careful only to allow his crozius to touch the metal haft of the warscythe rather than its energised blade. His return blow all but tore the necron’s head from its shoulders, and the Dark Apostle grinned savagely. What he had lost in speed was more than made up for by the boost in sheer brute strength that the tightly bound servo-muscles of his Terminator armour gifted him.
Battering another enemy aside, his combi-bolter scoring deep wounds across its armoured chest, Marduk surged forward, desperate to close the distance with the Undying One.
The dull ache in his chest, the pain of separation from the warp, seemed all the worse in close proximity to these deadly warriors. He wanted to end this battle swiftly. He did not know how long he could endure the gaping void that seemed to fill him.
The Undying One glided smoothly into the brutal melee, double-bladed staff spinning in its hands. With consummate ease, two of the Anointed were instantly cut down. Both of the warriors were sliced neatly in two with a contemptuous lack of effort. The spinning Nexus Arrangement embedded in the ancient being’s chest spilt its ethereal light before it, taunting Marduk.
Another Anointed warrior was slain, the Undying One’s bladed staff slicing neatly from shoulder to hip, and the two parts of the warrior slid to the ground. The necron lord spun the staff around in a blinding arc, levelling one of its tips at another Chaos Terminator, and a searing blast of energy slammed into the unfortunate warrior. The Anointed warrior reeled backwards, a head-sized hole punched clear through his chest.
Marduk snarled and launched himself forward, coming at the Undying One from the side. He saw the hulking form of Kol Badar moving to attack the ancient being from its other flank, combi-bolter roaring in his hand, and he felt a surge of rage at the thought of his Coryphaus stealing his kill.
The Undying One’s head was turned away from him, focussed on Kol Badar. He stepped in close, lifting his crozius arcanum with all his might, aiming his strike at the fell being’s delicate-looking, slender skull. The blow never landed, for without so much as turning its head, the necron lord parried th
e blow with one of the energy-bladed tips of its staff, even as the other blade sliced across Kol Badar’s torso, almost eviscerating him.
Turning with a deceptively languid, smooth movement, still hovering a metre above the ground, the Undying One fended off the attacks of both Marduk and Kol Badar with ease. A third warrior entered the fray, power maul striking out. The Anointed brother was instantly slain, an energy blade plunged through his head.
Blood welling from the deep wound slashed across his torso, Kol Badar lifted his combi-bolter, spraying bolts from its twin-barrels. The Undying One’s shroud billowed out around it as it turned, and a dense cloud of scarabs was unleashed upon the Coryphaus, biting and clawing at him. Though the miniscule, robotic insects could do little real damage to him, encased as he was within his Terminator armour, they soaked up the fury of his weapon fire, the bolts detonating well before striking their intended target.
Marduk aimed another strike at his enemy. But again the double-bladed staff came around in a blinding arc, turning his weapon aside. Marduk had prepared for this reaction, and swiftly altered his angle of attack, but this too was blocked, a deft circular parry disarming him neatly, sending his crozius arcanum spinning away, landing several metres away.
Still turning, the Undying One cut another Anointed brother in two as he stepped forward to attack the ancient being, before neatly ramming one of the energy-blades straight through Kol Badar, impaling him on its length.
Marduk lifted his combi-bolter towards his enemy, squeezing the trigger. Before the first bolt was launched from the chamber, the Undying One slid its blade clear of Kol Badar and swung it around. Marduk was knocked back a step, and it was only when he saw blood spraying out in a geyser that he realised something was wrong.
The pain kicked in a heartbeat later, and the Dark Apostle gazed down in disbelief at his severed arm lying on the ground. His combi-bolter was still clutched in his hand.
On the other side of the Undying One, Kol Badar dropped to one knee, blood pumping from his chest wound. The ancient being twirled its staff around in a deft display of skill. A ring of bodies surrounded it.
Necrons closed in on all sides, gauss flayers spitting death, and Marduk, refusing to accept defeat, felt his anger build.
“Face me, betrayer!” came a booming cry and the immense figure of the Warmonger burst through a cluster of necrons, smashing them out of its path with a sweep of one massive, mechanised arm. Heavy bolters spewed a torrent of fire before it as it charged.
The Warmonger’s voice was hoarse from leading the Host in their battle psalms, yet it still carried great power and authority. His eyes were locked on the hated figure of his foe, bedecked in fluted, golden armour.
His crozius dripped blood from its barbed tips, and his armour was pitted with battle damage. He was exhausted, for this battle had been raging for weeks. He could not recall when he had last rested. But none of that mattered, not now that the being that was the focus of all his hatred and bitterness was within his reach.
The bodies of his defeated foes lay strewn about him, their yellow armour splattered with blood. None of them stood in his way now.
As far as the eye could see, the battle raged on, brother fighting brother. It was glorious, and yet it filled him with a deep burning hatred for the one who had, in his arrogance, been the cause of it all.
He licked his blood-flecked lips and clenched his hand tightly around the haft of his crozius as he looked upon the one whose hands were stained with the blood of every noble brother Astartes that had fallen.
Once he had called this man Emperor. Once he had even worshipped him. He spat, as if his mouth were suddenly filled with a vile poison.
Liar. Betrayer of the Crusade. Betrayer of the Warmaster.
He had deceived them all.
“Now, it is over,” he said. “Your lies shall lead no more brother Astartes to their deaths, false one.”
And on the walls of the largest palace ever constructed, he hurled himself at his mortal enemy, determined to be the one that killed the False Emperor.
“Now, it is over,” the Warmonger boomed. “Your lies shall lead no more brother Astartes to their deaths, false one.”
The Undying One turned smoothly to face the Dreadnought rampaging towards it, and with inhuman speed and suppleness, it contorted its body like a dancer’s. Bolts sprayed around it, tearing holes through its billowing shroud, but failing to strike its body.
On the Warmonger came, roaring incoherently as it pounded forward, a ten-tonne behemoth of metal and brutality.
The Undying One ducked neatly beneath the Dreadnought’s swinging talons, its double-bladed staff slicing out, striking across the Warmonger’s armoured chassis amid an explosion of sparks and the agonising scream of rending metal.
The Warmonger struggled to arrest its forward momentum, which took it past the Undying One. The Dreadnought’s damaged chassis was rotating before it had yet ground to a halt, dragging its heavy bolters around. The heavy weapons roared, belching an impenetrable curtain of high-calibre shells around in a wide arc, chasing its elusive foe. The Undying One was too swift, always a fraction of a second in front of the devastating salvo.
Hefting its double-bladed staff like a spear, the Undying One glided forward, heavy bolter rounds ripping at its shadow-cloak. With inhuman strength and speed, the Undying One rammed its weapon into the heart of the Dreadnought’s chassis. The glowing energy blade slid effortlessly through the Warmonger’s thick armour plates, impaling it.
Marduk roared in outrage and denial but was helpless as the Undying One ripped the glowing energy blade free, tearing it out sideways in a disembowelling stroke that ripped open the Dreadnought’s sarcophagus. Stinking amniotic fluids gushed from this fatal wound, and Marduk caught a glimpse of the Warmonger’s corpse within, shrunken, pallid and foetal.
It was hard to believe that once this had been one of the Legion’s proudest warriors, a Dark Apostle no less. It now looked like an exhumed cadaver, a half-rotten corpse cruelly kept lingering in some horrific unlife. Wires, cables and tubes connected this lifeless, drowned thing to the Dreadnought’s nervous system. It was only this spider web tangle that kept it from flopping out onto the ground. It was little more than a wasted torso, upon which a skeletal head hung loosely.
Most of its skull was gone, either from the extent of the injuries that had seen it interred or surgically removed, and the exposed brain matter—a horrible colour, like rotten fruit—was pierced with dozens of needle-tipped wires. It was missing its lower jaw. Only its visible fused ribcage and the gigantism of its skeleton revealed that this had once been a proud Astartes warrior.
The Warmonger’s mechanised Dreadnought body shuddered and twitched, sparks bursting from damaged wiring and cabling.
Marduk hooked his sacred crozius at his waist and dropped to one knee, prying the archaic combi-bolter from his own dead hand. He fired at the back of the Undying One’s head as he rose, snarling in hatred.
Displaying unnatural prescience, the Undying One swayed aside from the burst of bolter fire, twirling its energy scythe around its hands as it turned.
It was unable to avoid the Warmonger, however.
The Dreadnought was not yet finished and as the Undying One turned away, the Warmonger lashed out, clamping its immense power talons around the body of its adversary. The necron lord struggled, its double-bladed staff flailing, but it could not escape. It was completely enclosed within the Warmonger’s grasp.
“Death to the False Emperor!” the Dreadnought roared, clenching its fist.
The Undying One’s humanoid form splintered, exploding into a million scarabs. In the centre of the buzzing cloud of metallic insects hovered the Nexus Arrangement.
Sparks and sickly black smoke rose from the Warmonger as the Dreadnought twitched spasmodically. The Undying One’s bodyguard stepped forward, warscythes flashing as they tore into the Warmonger’s armoured flanks.
Marduk roared in anger, stamping forwards, c
ombi-bolter roaring in his hand. Kol Badar smashed a pair of Immortals and stepped into the midst of the scarab swarm, swatting at the robotic insects.
He only registered the Coryphaus when his power talons closed around the Nexus Arrangement, plucking it out of the air. As the hulking warlord’s bladed fingers closed around the spinning orb the device once more took on its prior form, that of an inert, solid sphere.
Reality shuddered, and Marduk gasped as he felt the blessed touch of the aether crash in upon him once more. The Dark Apostle whispered a prayer of thanks to the gods that he sensed around him.
Kol Badar held the Nexus Arrangement within his power talons, gunning down a pair of necrons with his combi-bolter. The blood around the hole in his chest was already scabbed and dry, the Larraman cells in his bloodstream having sealed the wound.
The angry buzzing of the scarab cloud became more insistent, and Marduk saw it begin to coalesce into a tight, dense swarm once more, forming the unmistakeable outline of the Undying One.
“We need to leave. Now,” said Marduk, firing his combi-bolter on full auto, blasting holes in the reforming necron lord. Even as he did so, he knew it was futile—the Undying One was reforming, and no matter what he did, nothing would halt its progress.
“Ashkanez,” said Kol Badar. “Initiate teleport return. Now!”
“Do it,” said First Acolyte Ashkanez, nodding his head towards Burias. All around them, the ship was repowering, coming back to unholy life as the daemons that had for so long been infused with it returned.
[Word Bearers 03] - Dark Creed Page 29