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Another adventure aboard the Child of Calamity, a story about two sidekicks. I hope you enjoy it.
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The Wretch absently reached up and adjusted the brass collar around his neck. The spikes that pierced the flesh of his neck were no less painful than on the day the collar was forced upon him, but the horrifying nothingness of separation from the Warp had long since faded to a dull throb. Usually he didn't notice even that much, but today, this moment, it pressed to the forefront of his mind once more. His numb fingers hefted the chainaxe permanently chained to his wrist and he increased his pace long enough to resume his place by his master's side.
"Don't fall behind, Wretch."
It shouldn't have been hard to follow the hulking terminator, but a purely intuitive dread made his limbs feel heavy and slowed his tread. The two plodded along the dark, empty corridors of an unused section of the spacehulk Child of Calamity, the Wretch hesitating to break the his master's silence. Anticipation of violence always but his master in a good mood, and the Wretch did not wish to instigate the inevitable wrath early and thus make himself its target.
"My lord, I don't believe..." The Wretch began, then thought better of the phrasing. "My lord, I don't fully comprehend your reasons or your methods in this latest endeavor."
"She's a witch," the brass trimmed terminator lord replied dismissively. "I am going to kill her, paint the walls with her blood, offer her skull to the Skull Throne, then go back to my quarters and watch you clean little bits of her from the teeth of my chain-axe. What's not to comprehend?"
"It will antagonize the Warsmith." The Wretch meant for it to sound matter-of-fact, but knew even before he was finished speaking the words that they sounded as weak and afraid as he felt. The master's warband had a fearful reputation, but it was very plain to the Wretch from the moment he stepped aboard the spacehulk that the Warsmith operated on a level the Wretch had previously believed not possible this far from the Eye of Terror.
"It is meant to antagonize the Warsmith, Wretch."
The shadows closed in, and the Wretch remained silent for a long while, scanning the recesses and corners for any sign of ambush.
"I am a witch, master." The Wretch said suddenly.
The only response from his master was the gentle noise of the skulls and chains clanking against the heavy ceramite armour of the terminator suit, keeping rhythm to the heavy tread of his armoured boots.
"Why do you prolong my suffering?" The Wretch asked quietly, longing for the answer even as he feared the truth of it.
"You have always underestimated me, Wretch." His master replied with an uncharacteristic sigh. "I seek to redeem you, to cure your Warp addiction and show you the true way, the way of the Blood God. Your blood is not yet worthy to spill."
"But all blood is welcomed, master." Said the Wretch, the oft-heard rote phrase springing to his lips.
"See?" His master did something the Wretch had never seen him do before: he smiled without the prompting of a senseless massacre. "You are learning the ways of the Blood God despite your genetic affliction of psychic predisposition."
"The Witch is a prize possession of the Warsmith." The Wretch, unnerved by his master's attempt at humour, began to reason out his master's plan out loud in an attempt to understand it. "A Witchhunter who has embraced the role of witch and cast aside her faith in the False Emperor. But she is hated by many who would welcome her death. You hope to fracture the unity of the Warsmith's court..."
"Another reason why I haven't killed you yet, Wretch." His master admitted, "You're the only other space marine in the host both sane enough to converse with and smart enough to make the conversation worth the effort."
The Wretch hated himself immediately for the pleasure his master's praise gave him.
++
"You've kept me waiting." The voice of the Witch echoed from the darkness of the long arcade. It still echoed in whispers as she emerged from the shadows of the far end wearing only the long, red robes of her former Order. The Wretch could not help but stare, first at her lack of armour and weapons and then at the twisted vision of one of the rarest of the rare things that existed in the Galaxy: a Sister of Battle willingly turned against the Imperium and its so-called God-Emperor.
"This place is a maze." His master replied to the Witch casually, as if they were old friends. It was another of his unnerving habits, though the Wretch honestly did not know if it was deliberately cultivated for effect.
"Parts of it, yes." The Witch stood just inside the light of a lamp that flickered at long, irregular intervals. The tone of her voice was even and unhurried, but lacked the easygoing attitude of his master.
"You are a whore of Tzeentch," His master stated matter-of-factly, without raising his voice or changing his casual tone. He stalked forward in his Terminator armour and gave his chainaxe a few testing swings as if they were merely entering a practice cage to spar. "Your sorceries will not save you against me. The act of killing you will be less than satisfying, but your death will begin the fall of your Warsmith. That I will find immensely satisfying."
The Witch gave his master no response, but instead looked past him and directly at the Wretch. The bite of the brass collar at his neck raised in intensity. The Wretch gasped, pulling at the collar with his free hand as he stumbled backward under the weight of the Witch's gaze.
Strong, armoured hands gripped him, clamping around his wrists and over his mouth. His legs gave out and his feet were no longer under him. He sank silently to the floor, then began to thrash in an irrational panic as he felt the cold iron of cutting tools pressing against the flesh of his neck.
"Neither will your pathetic thralls save you." The terminator lord pushed his heavy suit into a stomping jog, a wrecking ball gaining inexorable momentum. For her part, the Witch only arched an eyebrow in exasperated scorn.
The Wretch watched his master raise the chain-axe high and begin its swift, deadly descent.
With a metallic snap the collar of Khorne came loose and fell from the Wretch's neck. Its heavy presence had been much more than physical, and the Wretch felt a lightness of being long forgotten. The unnatural darkness clouding the spacehulk's ancient chamber instantly pushed back, and the Wretch beheld the weapon the Witch had brought an instant before his master did. Guttering jets of blue-green fire sputtered and blazed from the blackness, and the heavy smell of machine oil and choking smoke flooded the arcade from the exhaust stacks as the engine labored at the red line to move such bulk with sudden, frightening power.
With an ear splitting report of metal on metal crashing with terrific energy, the terminator lord's mass was instantly denied. The chain-axe flung from his hand and whipped over the Witch's shoulder, it's whirring teeth sketching the thinnest trace of blood from the edge of her left ear.
++THIS WOMAN IS THE PROPERTY OF THE GRAND COMPANY++
The rust covered Contemptor-class Dreadnought raised the terminator lord effortlessly in its enormous seige claw. The cooling coils of its enormous plasma cannon began to glow an unearthly green, made all the more eerie by the heat shimmering in the air around them.
"That is enough." The Witch still did not raise her voice, but the command was unmistakeable.
++I DO NOT TAKE ORDERS FROM YOU++
And yet the light and heat faded from the plasma coils. The Contemptor stood silent for a moment, then turned its armoured head to the struggling terminator in its grasp as if noticing it for the first time.
++WHERE DO YOU FIND SUCH TRASH, WITCH++
With a swift, brutal motion the Contemptor smashed the terminator lord to the deck. Without further comment, the Contemptor stepped over the broken body of the Wretch's master and stalked through one of the archways and into the black depths of the spacehulk.
"Master!" The Wretch struggled ineffectually in the hands of the silent space marine thralls of the Witch as they dragged him forward to kneel over the fallen teriminator lord.
"Master?" The Witch moved to stand opposite of the Wretch, the groaning terminator between them. She was slight and short, barely taller than the kneeling Wretch. Yet the Wretch could now see the power of the Warp swirling about her, caught and bound in the aether by expertly knotted strings of fate. She looked down upon the broken form of the terminator, ignoring the trembling arm that reached an armoured gauntlet toward her throat in vain effort. "This doesn't look like the master of anything."
The Witch pulled an athame from the sleeve of her robe and held it out, handle first, over the fallen lord.
"Time to sign the transfer of ownership, Wretch." The words sounded small and weak to the post-human ears of the Wretch, but to his awakened second sight their power pushed through the aether as undeniable, golden wave.
The Wretch took up the athame and felt its power vibrate in his hand and reality twist around the razor edge of its blade. What a living Hell this blade would inflict! So fascinated by the athame's potential that he was startled by the coughing laugh of the teriminator lord.
"The murder of a brother..." The terminator smiled, blood flecks decorating his face and matting his beard. "I knew you had it in you, Wretch."
The Wretch's former master leaned his head back to bare his neck, but did not close his eyes. In a weak, fading voice he exclaimed, "Blood for the Blood God!"
The stroke was swift. The Wretch reached for and found his long forgotten power and channeled it into the blade at precisely the right moment. As the bright red blood arced through the air, his former master lived an eternity of torment in that split second. Then the first drops splattered across the bulky, crumpled armour plates of the TDA and his soul was annihilated in an instant.
"Skulls for the Skull Throne." The Wretch whispered. Tthe words burned in his throat and he began to laugh hysterically, thankful it gave an excuse for the bitter tears he wept.
++
The Witch kicked the heels of her armoured boots against the wall ineffectively. She struggled in vain to tear the Warsmith's armoured fingers from around her thin neck. She choked and gasped a string of spittle as she laboured for air. The Wretch honestly wanted to intervene, but was cowed by the pure radiance of power crushing through the aether as it emanted from the Warsmith.
"Just a little thrashing to remind you where you stand, woman." The Warsmith finally released the Witch, who slumped to the floor, wretching and gulping for air.
"I would feel neglected and unwanted, otherwise." The Witch managed to rasp out, massaging her throat. She stood on unsteady feet, then faced the towering figure of the Warsmith with brazen impertinence. "So can I keep him?"
The Warsmith stalked out of the side chamber and out into his large throne room without a word in answer or a second look at the Wretch.
The Witch smiled. She had plans for her new thing. It would not be like the others, her mindless bolter carriers and meat shields who fawned so disgustingly over her. This broken thing had true power, and she would make use of it.
"Come, Apprentice." The Witch followed the Warsmith and waved a dismissive hand toward her thralls.
The Wretch... no... The Apprentice scurried after her, taking pleasure in the hateful, jealous stares of her lesser servants forced to stay behind.
"Don't fall behind, Wretch."
It shouldn't have been hard to follow the hulking terminator, but a purely intuitive dread made his limbs feel heavy and slowed his tread. The two plodded along the dark, empty corridors of an unused section of the spacehulk Child of Calamity, the Wretch hesitating to break the his master's silence. Anticipation of violence always but his master in a good mood, and the Wretch did not wish to instigate the inevitable wrath early and thus make himself its target.
"My lord, I don't believe..." The Wretch began, then thought better of the phrasing. "My lord, I don't fully comprehend your reasons or your methods in this latest endeavor."
"She's a witch," the brass trimmed terminator lord replied dismissively. "I am going to kill her, paint the walls with her blood, offer her skull to the Skull Throne, then go back to my quarters and watch you clean little bits of her from the teeth of my chain-axe. What's not to comprehend?"
"It will antagonize the Warsmith." The Wretch meant for it to sound matter-of-fact, but knew even before he was finished speaking the words that they sounded as weak and afraid as he felt. The master's warband had a fearful reputation, but it was very plain to the Wretch from the moment he stepped aboard the spacehulk that the Warsmith operated on a level the Wretch had previously believed not possible this far from the Eye of Terror.
"It is meant to antagonize the Warsmith, Wretch."
The shadows closed in, and the Wretch remained silent for a long while, scanning the recesses and corners for any sign of ambush.
"I am a witch, master." The Wretch said suddenly.
The only response from his master was the gentle noise of the skulls and chains clanking against the heavy ceramite armour of the terminator suit, keeping rhythm to the heavy tread of his armoured boots.
"Why do you prolong my suffering?" The Wretch asked quietly, longing for the answer even as he feared the truth of it.
"You have always underestimated me, Wretch." His master replied with an uncharacteristic sigh. "I seek to redeem you, to cure your Warp addiction and show you the true way, the way of the Blood God. Your blood is not yet worthy to spill."
"But all blood is welcomed, master." Said the Wretch, the oft-heard rote phrase springing to his lips.
"See?" His master did something the Wretch had never seen him do before: he smiled without the prompting of a senseless massacre. "You are learning the ways of the Blood God despite your genetic affliction of psychic predisposition."
"The Witch is a prize possession of the Warsmith." The Wretch, unnerved by his master's attempt at humour, began to reason out his master's plan out loud in an attempt to understand it. "A Witchhunter who has embraced the role of witch and cast aside her faith in the False Emperor. But she is hated by many who would welcome her death. You hope to fracture the unity of the Warsmith's court..."
"Another reason why I haven't killed you yet, Wretch." His master admitted, "You're the only other space marine in the host both sane enough to converse with and smart enough to make the conversation worth the effort."
The Wretch hated himself immediately for the pleasure his master's praise gave him.
++
"You've kept me waiting." The voice of the Witch echoed from the darkness of the long arcade. It still echoed in whispers as she emerged from the shadows of the far end wearing only the long, red robes of her former Order. The Wretch could not help but stare, first at her lack of armour and weapons and then at the twisted vision of one of the rarest of the rare things that existed in the Galaxy: a Sister of Battle willingly turned against the Imperium and its so-called God-Emperor.
"This place is a maze." His master replied to the Witch casually, as if they were old friends. It was another of his unnerving habits, though the Wretch honestly did not know if it was deliberately cultivated for effect.
"Parts of it, yes." The Witch stood just inside the light of a lamp that flickered at long, irregular intervals. The tone of her voice was even and unhurried, but lacked the easygoing attitude of his master.
"You are a whore of Tzeentch," His master stated matter-of-factly, without raising his voice or changing his casual tone. He stalked forward in his Terminator armour and gave his chainaxe a few testing swings as if they were merely entering a practice cage to spar. "Your sorceries will not save you against me. The act of killing you will be less than satisfying, but your death will begin the fall of your Warsmith. That I will find immensely satisfying."
The Witch gave his master no response, but instead looked past him and directly at the Wretch. The bite of the brass collar at his neck raised in intensity. The Wretch gasped, pulling at the collar with his free hand as he stumbled backward under the weight of the Witch's gaze.
Strong, armoured hands gripped him, clamping around his wrists and over his mouth. His legs gave out and his feet were no longer under him. He sank silently to the floor, then began to thrash in an irrational panic as he felt the cold iron of cutting tools pressing against the flesh of his neck.
"Neither will your pathetic thralls save you." The terminator lord pushed his heavy suit into a stomping jog, a wrecking ball gaining inexorable momentum. For her part, the Witch only arched an eyebrow in exasperated scorn.
The Wretch watched his master raise the chain-axe high and begin its swift, deadly descent.
With a metallic snap the collar of Khorne came loose and fell from the Wretch's neck. Its heavy presence had been much more than physical, and the Wretch felt a lightness of being long forgotten. The unnatural darkness clouding the spacehulk's ancient chamber instantly pushed back, and the Wretch beheld the weapon the Witch had brought an instant before his master did. Guttering jets of blue-green fire sputtered and blazed from the blackness, and the heavy smell of machine oil and choking smoke flooded the arcade from the exhaust stacks as the engine labored at the red line to move such bulk with sudden, frightening power.
With an ear splitting report of metal on metal crashing with terrific energy, the terminator lord's mass was instantly denied. The chain-axe flung from his hand and whipped over the Witch's shoulder, it's whirring teeth sketching the thinnest trace of blood from the edge of her left ear.
++THIS WOMAN IS THE PROPERTY OF THE GRAND COMPANY++
The rust covered Contemptor-class Dreadnought raised the terminator lord effortlessly in its enormous seige claw. The cooling coils of its enormous plasma cannon began to glow an unearthly green, made all the more eerie by the heat shimmering in the air around them.
"That is enough." The Witch still did not raise her voice, but the command was unmistakeable.
++I DO NOT TAKE ORDERS FROM YOU++
And yet the light and heat faded from the plasma coils. The Contemptor stood silent for a moment, then turned its armoured head to the struggling terminator in its grasp as if noticing it for the first time.
++WHERE DO YOU FIND SUCH TRASH, WITCH++
With a swift, brutal motion the Contemptor smashed the terminator lord to the deck. Without further comment, the Contemptor stepped over the broken body of the Wretch's master and stalked through one of the archways and into the black depths of the spacehulk.
"Master!" The Wretch struggled ineffectually in the hands of the silent space marine thralls of the Witch as they dragged him forward to kneel over the fallen teriminator lord.
"Master?" The Witch moved to stand opposite of the Wretch, the groaning terminator between them. She was slight and short, barely taller than the kneeling Wretch. Yet the Wretch could now see the power of the Warp swirling about her, caught and bound in the aether by expertly knotted strings of fate. She looked down upon the broken form of the terminator, ignoring the trembling arm that reached an armoured gauntlet toward her throat in vain effort. "This doesn't look like the master of anything."
The Witch pulled an athame from the sleeve of her robe and held it out, handle first, over the fallen lord.
"Time to sign the transfer of ownership, Wretch." The words sounded small and weak to the post-human ears of the Wretch, but to his awakened second sight their power pushed through the aether as undeniable, golden wave.
The Wretch took up the athame and felt its power vibrate in his hand and reality twist around the razor edge of its blade. What a living Hell this blade would inflict! So fascinated by the athame's potential that he was startled by the coughing laugh of the teriminator lord.
"The murder of a brother..." The terminator smiled, blood flecks decorating his face and matting his beard. "I knew you had it in you, Wretch."
The Wretch's former master leaned his head back to bare his neck, but did not close his eyes. In a weak, fading voice he exclaimed, "Blood for the Blood God!"
The stroke was swift. The Wretch reached for and found his long forgotten power and channeled it into the blade at precisely the right moment. As the bright red blood arced through the air, his former master lived an eternity of torment in that split second. Then the first drops splattered across the bulky, crumpled armour plates of the TDA and his soul was annihilated in an instant.
"Skulls for the Skull Throne." The Wretch whispered. Tthe words burned in his throat and he began to laugh hysterically, thankful it gave an excuse for the bitter tears he wept.
++
The Witch kicked the heels of her armoured boots against the wall ineffectively. She struggled in vain to tear the Warsmith's armoured fingers from around her thin neck. She choked and gasped a string of spittle as she laboured for air. The Wretch honestly wanted to intervene, but was cowed by the pure radiance of power crushing through the aether as it emanted from the Warsmith.
"Just a little thrashing to remind you where you stand, woman." The Warsmith finally released the Witch, who slumped to the floor, wretching and gulping for air.
"I would feel neglected and unwanted, otherwise." The Witch managed to rasp out, massaging her throat. She stood on unsteady feet, then faced the towering figure of the Warsmith with brazen impertinence. "So can I keep him?"
The Warsmith stalked out of the side chamber and out into his large throne room without a word in answer or a second look at the Wretch.
The Witch smiled. She had plans for her new thing. It would not be like the others, her mindless bolter carriers and meat shields who fawned so disgustingly over her. This broken thing had true power, and she would make use of it.
"Come, Apprentice." The Witch followed the Warsmith and waved a dismissive hand toward her thralls.
The Wretch... no... The Apprentice scurried after her, taking pleasure in the hateful, jealous stares of her lesser servants forced to stay behind.
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I may have heard something similar at least a hundred times.
