The Warsmith, if he could still be called that, wandered through the cold darkness of the space hulk. His few remaining space marines trailed a distance behind him, silent yet ever present at the edges of his awareness. It had been days since any of these few had spoken to him, and he sometimes forgot they were still there. A few dozen line troopers, a handful of terminators, and a despondent Dreadnought were all that remained of a nearly three thousand strong Grand Company.
The Emperor’s Children had been relentless in their pursuit. There had been no safe haven from their predation, no forbearance of their vengeance. The only place in the galaxy they believed they could run to was too far away, with too many enemies and opportunists in-between. There was only deeper into the unknown, and the vain hope that there might be a distance that their foes would not go.
++THEY HAVE FOUND US++
The Old Warsmith intoned, relaying the weak signal from the remains of their battle barge.
++THREE STRIKE CRUISERS. THIRD LEGION. STILL SEVERAL HOURS OUT++
The Warsmith did not acknowledge this information. It had only ever been a matter of time. He plodded forward in his battered Terminator armour, pressing deeper into the space hulk. Unable to push deeper into the Eye of Terror this space hulk was all he had left. His last voidship suffering cascading failures, finally succumbing to its slow death, the monstrous spacehulk had at least given them a place to go, such as it was.
Forward.
+++++++++++++
Polished gems glittering in the darkness. Two of them. Where had he seen that before?
She looked like an aparition, a phantom. The Warsmith’s heavy armoured boots carried him right up to her, and he stopped within arm’s reach of the gaunt Eldar woman.
“Do I know you?” The Warsmith asked, glazed eyes staring through the Farseer, mouth slack, with a dab of drool in the corner of his coarse beard and a hint of madness in his voice.
“I owe you my life.” The Farseer whispered, suddenly close. “And that of my child.”
“That does not sound plausible.” The Warsmith said in an even, emotionless voice, swaying slightly, arms dangling loosely at his side. “I am a destroyer of worlds, a worker of evil, not a savior of mothers.”
“I see a path into the future for you.” The Farseer ran her long, slender fingers over the Warsmith’s brow, gently arranging his tousled bangs out of his eyes. “This path, this possibility begins from the moment you first laid eyes upon us, to thousands of years into the future, and into an eternity beyond time itself.”
“No.” The Warsmith let his combi-bolter slip from his numb fingers and it clattered to the deck. Just as gently as the Farseer had brushed away his hair, he took her own frail hand in his pushed it away. “There is nothing left for us here but to die.”
“Yes.” The Farseer closed her eyes, looking deep within herself. “But I will prophesy for you, Worker of Evil. Two more will you meet here in this dark place. Individually they are death to you. Exchange blood with me, accept me as your sister, and I will show you the far side of death. We three will be the pillars you raise your Grand Company upon anew.”
“They are all dead.” The Warsmith whispered. “And soon so shall we be. It would be a Grand Company of ghosts.”
“Yes.” The Farseer produced a slender, wicked knife made of bone from her flowing robes with her free hand. She turned the Warsmith’s palm upward and drew a thin line of blood with a quick flick. The Warsmith stared at the blood, not at all surprised when his Astartes physiology could not staunch the flow. The Farseer offered him the handle of the bone knife. “The choice is yours, Worker of Evil.”
“Warsmith.” A voice called from the darkness, the Librarian. “I cannot see you. Where have you gone?”
“I remember you now.” The Warsmith dropped his axe, letting it dangle from its power cable. He used this hand to take the bone knife. “A prisoner of the III Legion, I refused to shed your blood. I will do it now, if it is the only way forward.”
“Brother.” The Farseer said as the two clasped bleeding palms together. She opened her eyes and stared deeply into the Warsmith’s. “There will come a time when I will call you and you must answer.”
“Tell me what I need to know.” The Warsmith squeezed his hand, feeling the pulse of the Eldar woman’s heart as her blood pumped into his veins. “Sister.”
+++++++++++++
“They are on the spacehulk.” The Librarian said to the Warsmith. “I can feel them.”
“Yes.” The Warsmith answered him calmly. “So can I.”
The Librarian gave him a sidelong glance, but did not ask the obvious question. They walked together, deeper into the spacehulk, the rest of the Grand Company’s remains trailing.
“Are you mad?” The Librarian eventually asked. There was no accusation or anger in the question. He may as well have been asking if the Warsmith were cold, or hungry.
“I used to think I was the only sane man in a galaxy created for the insane.” The Warsmith told him.
“And now?” The Librarian asked.
“I have nothing clever to say about it.” The Warsmith said with a sigh. “But we must go forward. That is all that matters.”
“Stop!” The Librarian suddenly drew back, placing an arm across the Warsmith’s chest and holding his force staff horizontally out before them. “Something is here!”
“I know.” The Warsmith removed the Librarian’s warning arm away and stepped around the protective staff, cold dread hanging in the expectant air.
“Have you come to play with me?”
Out of the shadows stepped a girl child. In the dreary depths of the ancient spacehulk she seemed so out of place that she might not be real. She wore a black and white chequed dress of a romanticized Gothic style with a frilly under-dress and a black velvet bodice. White stockings disappeared into shiny black buckle-shoes. Her skin was nearly as pale as the gossamer white sleeves, and her long hair was blacker than night itself, as were her liquid black eyes. The red silk ribbon in her hair was too, too red, however. It was such a vivid red that it seemed completely removed from the play of light and darkness in the natural environment.
“I have come to play the greatest game with you.” The Warsmith moved to stand before her. Looking down at her he felt an irrational hatred, a primal instinct that begged him to lash out at the thing in frenzied violence. He focused on the secrets and promises the Farseer had whispered into his ear and stifled the impulse to kill.
“And what will you give me if you lose?” The unearthly little girl smiled.
+++++++++++++
++WE SHOULD BE LOOKING FOR A DEFENSIBLE POSITION++
The Old Warsmith complained, surveying the vast open space before them.
They had come to the heart of the spacehulk, an ancient colony cylinder from a pre-artificial gravity civilization. Of the few dozen warriors of the line they had left the doomed battle barge with, only fourteen remained. The rest had been killed or disappeared as the bizarre hunter-killer groups (for they could not be considered organized enough to be called teams or squads) had harried the Iron Warriors through the corridors over the last several days.
Through all the death and misadventure the Warsmith had remained oddly calm. This only agitated the heretofore morose Dreadnought, who repeatedly and with more frequency attempted to assert control over what was left of his former Grand Company.
“We are nearly there.” The Warsmith said simply, and walked past the industrial structures that the Old Warsmith was eyeing for a last stand.
++I DO NOT MIND DYING++
The Old Warsmith growled, spitting harsh static from its speakers.
++BUT I DO NOT WANT TO DIE WITHOUT SOME KIND OF PLAN IN MOTION++
The Dreadnought lashed out with its powerfist and knocked in a wall as he strode past it.
++I DO NOT WANT TO DIE RUNNING AWAY++
“We are not running away.” The Warsmith suddenly turned and pushed hard on the front of the dreadnought’s coffin. To the surprise of the several Iron Warriors looking on, the great machine stumbled backward a step. “We are moving toward a destination.”
The Warsmith turned and looked out into the black void that stretched many meters to the far side of the enormous cylinder. He held his arms out wide and the ambient light subtly grew brighter, making murky details of the far side visible if the effort was made.
++WHERE++
Demanded the Old Warsmith, unimpressed by the display of unnatural strength.
++WHERE ARE WE MOVING TOWARD++
H E R E I A M H E R E I AM H E R E
The words were not heard, but rather felt by the Iron Warriors. They seemed very far away at first, then felt as if they were emanating from their very bones. Finally they felt pulled in a specific direction. The Iron Warriors looked at one another, seeing their Warsmith already headed in that direction and well ahead of them.
“I hear you.” The Warsmith whispered, stumbling through the ruins of the ancient cityscape. “I feel you.”
The Warsmith heard his Iron Warriors calling to him. The sound of their voices grew distant and dreamlike, and soon he found himself alone. He stood in the ruins of an abandoned market, metal shelving overturned and askew, any products or equipment looted millennia before.
H E R E I A M H E R E
“I have come for you!” The Warsmith yelled into the silence, turning around, straining to see where the thoughts were coming into his mind from.
A stopped. In the distance an old woman sat upon an overturned display. Withered and grey she could have easily been mistaken for a shadow, or just another piece of wreckage in this impossibly old ruin.
“Serve me!” The Warsmith called to the hooded crone. “I will bring you the light of the stars and lay the galaxy at your feet if you will serve me and only me!”
The hooded woman turned her face to the Warsmith. Only the shadows reflected back at him, and the old woman was gone.
+++++++++++++
The Librarian felt the world shift around him and leaned on his staff. The sensation was dizzying. It overpowered him and the Librarian was forced to the ground, holding onto the cracked foundations of a tumbled down wall as if here were a shipwrecked sailor struggling against the tide.
The Old Warsmith stomped in circles, his uselessly out of fuel multimelta tracking frantically for targets.
The surviving Iron Warriors crouched uncertainly in the flotsam of the ruined cityscape. The Terminators formed a defensive circle, while the line troopers began to compulsively construct fighting positions and barricades from debris and rubble.
A low vibration shook their bones, traveling through their feet up from the deck. With the pops and thunks of warming lines and thrown switches the lights of the spacehulk began to come online. The thrum of atmospheric pumps pulsed and the stagnant air began to circulate.
“A neat trick!” The Emperor’s Children champion was a riot of colour and a mass of bizarre trophies. It cracked a whip made of braided human faces and a tittering mob of similar Astartes emerged to surround the beleaguered Iron Warriors. The champion blew an exaggerated kiss toward the Iron Warriors Terminator-captain and swept his free arm up to indicate the cylinder’s interior as it approached, hips swaying saucily. “But it’s not going to save your sad little faces.”
“It is over.” The Warsmith emerged from the ruined market, striding forward to stand among his Iron Warriors.
“Aw.” The Emperor’s Children champion pulled a disappointed pout, grotesquely swollen and painted lips adding to the insulting effect. “Don’t be like that. It’s not going to be over for a very, very long time. I do like to play.”
“I like to play too.”
The Emperor’s Children turned to stare down at the strange little girl who suddenly appeared amongst his circus of pleasure warriors. For the first time in a very long time, the champion was nonplussed.
“What is that?” The champion leaned down to examine the surreal apparition, and the Little Girl smiled sweetly at him. And smiled just a little wider than looked exactly comfortable. And then grinned even wider. The Emperors Children champion took a hesitant step backward as some measure of understanding began to show through his drug glazed eyes. “Oh no.”
“We will play such fun games.” As the Little Girl spoke her voice modulated deeper, and colours and sounds distorted, spatial distances becoming momentarily arbitrary and unstable. The Emperors Children fell backward, landing hard, and stared as the Little Girl loomed over him. Fascinated at the last moment by the forcefully unnatural red of the Little Girl’s ribbon, the champion did not resist as the Little Girl picked his suddenly doll-like body up and bit his head off. As the blood flowed from the stump of his neck like a red, red ribbon, the Little Girl turned to smile sweetly at the Warsmith. “Thank you, papa.”
Pandemonium broke loose as every party save the Warsmith began shooting and hacking at one another indiscriminately in a frenzy of fear and hate.
Aboard the wreckage of the Grand Company’s battle barge, docked many kilometers away, first one, then nearly three thousand space marines stood to attention from the places they had long ago fallen. Slowly remembering with dim recollection their standing orders, the restored 49th Grand Company marched grimly against the surprised and unprepared bedlam of the 3rd Legion’s vengeance force.
The Warsmith calmly walked away from the spasmodic melee, disappearing to explore his new home.
+++++++++++++
The emissary of the Black Legion looked out over the city from the observation deck of the Warsmith’s Throne Chamber. The city stretched away at least 20 kilometers of factories, businesses, housing blocks, a museums. Closest to the artificial mountain that the Warsmith’s citadel sat upon clustered the temple-barracks dedicated each to an individual company of the Grand Company lined broad boulevards interspersed with expansive parade grounds. He looked down upon a vibrant city, full of life and activity, all dedicated to supporting the nearly three thousand space marines of the 49th Grand Company and their many auxiliary soldiers and attendant warbands.
“The Warmaster requires this.” The Black Legion emissary spoke to the Warsmith without turning his gaze from the urbanized colony scene. Something tugged at the sorcerer’s mind. There was an emptiness in his soul, an oppressive melancholy. It had started the moment he set foot upon the spacehulk. Everything he set his eyes upon seemed too real, too vivid, yet perhaps a little ragged around the edges. There was a musty darkness pressing in from the corner of his vision, but only the dreamlike floating world of the Warsmith held before his direct observation.
“The Child of Calamity goes where I will it.” The Warsmith said calmly. “And I have not yet decided whether I will join your, what is it now? The seventh of your so-called crusades against the False Imperium. I may yet choose to fling you from this balcony instead.”
“Don’t be so impressed with yourself.” The Black Legion sorcerer sneered. “This pile of wreckage is nothing compared to the battlestations of the Black Fleet, and your thousands of Iron Warriors are a mere pittance compared with the Warmaster’s Legion. Cross the Warmaster and your petty ambitions will come to a crashing end.”
“You would hardly seem to need me, then.” The Warsmith chuckled.
“We need your fleet. We need your station. We need your manufactorums. We need your warriors.” The Black Legion sorcerer turned and hotly told the Warsmith. “We do not need YOU.”
The Warsmith, who was quite large even for a space marine, looked down upon the sorcerer. His eyes narrowed and his mouth set into a determined line, and for a moment he really did look as if he were preparing to heave the sorcerer off the balcony.
“My lord, your… sister... has sent you a communique.” A mortal messenger knelt before the pair of arguing space marines, still breathing heavily after having sprinted from the Control Room.
“That seems an unlikely conceit.” The Black Legionnaire snorted dismissively.
The Warsmith ignored him and bent to retrieve the slip of paper offered by the mortal crewman. He did not hide it from the sorcerer, who openly leaned in to look when he unfolded it. There was a only a single Eldar rune of elaborate and unusual construction printed upon the parchment.
“Call it destiny.” The Warsmith said, mood suddenly lighter. “I have decided not to hurl you screaming from this great height.”
“Oh I am relieved.” The sorcerer said drolly.
“I have been summoned, and I will answer, as I promised to do.” The Warsmith handed the parchment back to the mortal servant, who scurried away with relief. “The galaxy awaits!”
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