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[Dumah]

This is an accounting of deeds for unsung heroes - a brotherhood of castoffs and miscreants. It begins with the past...

 

 

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Epilogue: Part 1 - Son of Antaeus

 

 

Even among brothers, I am reviled.

 

Until my strength is needed, I am a sufferance and little more. Between undertakings I am left to my own devices, which suits my humors. I have taken great solace in meditation and verse. I will admit that I sometimes yearn for the brotherhood I once knew; among those of my own ilk where my stature saw me as one of many rather than an anomaly and a source of mistrust and superstition.

 

**

 

The squad vox clicked in Gigas’ ears.

 

He smiled behind his face-plate; this was what he was made for, and glory did it feel good. Gigas broke from cover at a dead run and charged like a bull grox straight for the bulkhead door. The melta bombs detonated a half second before impact, weakening the structural integrity of the portal at critical junctures. Gigas’ massive body knocked the armored panel clear of the frame, sending it to clatter a dozen meters and make a mess of those unfortunate enough to be sheltering behind it. His brothers followed close on his heels, taking advantage of the mobile cover his over-bulked frame afforded.

 

One cultist leveled a heavy mining laser at Gigas, hitting him square in the chest at point blank range. Where another brother would have been felled, if not mortally wounded, Gigas grunted and took one step backwards. He cocked his head to the side, flexing his empty gauntlets.

 

“A good attempt,” he rumbled and gathered the hybrid-thing in his massive arms.

 

Gigas squeezed, feeling the cracking and crunch of his victim’s skeleton collapsing, then hurled the corpse at the next of its heinous kind. The hybrid ducked and recovered, swinging trefoil limbs in deadly arcs of chitin. Gigas felt the impacts, grunting as his foe’s claws sheared through ceramite on his chest and thighs. He reached for it, seeking to draw it into his crushing embrace, but the thing was hellishly fast. Gigas sighed and, almost resignedly, reached for his hammer.

 

**

 

Watch Sergeant Indrii curled his lip, using one boot to dislodge the monstrosity weighting down the blade of his nimcha.

 

“Report,” he demanded of his brothers.

 

Three vox-clicks signaled the all-clear. Indrii frowned. “Gigas-”

 

A massive body flew at his head, forcing the sergeant to duck. He recognized the shattered remains of an Aberrant as it sailed overhead.

 

“Clear,” the giant boomed, sounding pleased with himself. He appeared relaxed, resting the haft of his absurdly large weapon on one massive shoulder. Indrii suppressed the urge to spit.

 

“That was intentional…” Brother Owain hissed over a private channel. Indrii silenced him with a gesture. He looked at Gigas and pointed with his sword. “Perimeter, go.”

 

**

 

No thanks are necessary, which is well as none are given. I content myself with my role, knowing that I perform it very well. Service is its own reward. And until the day when I am reunited with my kin – whether in this life or the next – I will hold my ground.

 

That is what I was made for.

Edited by Dumah, 23 March 2020 - 09:04 PM.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Good job.

[Dumah]

Epilogue: Part 2 - The Minotaur

 

 

The keenness of the unpowered blade was such that it passed through its target and stuck fast within the rock beneath. For a moment, the knight stood there regarding his final enemy. The wretch was twisted and malformed, worse than some but less than others on that benighted world. Brother Parcival felt no glory in the kill – its feeble flailing had presented no challenge. But honor was satisfied and that would be enough. He unlocked the hand flamer from his thigh plate and proceeded to burn the mutant to ash.

 

“A good kill,” a voice like the shifting of tectonic plates rumbled from behind him.

 

Parcival whirled, raising his silver blade, unadorned save for the red crosspiece that mimicked the heraldry upon his shoulder and surplice. With his free hand he still brandished the flamer. The newcomer met Parcival’s readiness with a gruesome chuckle. He crouched on a boulder near to the mouth of the dried out gully where the knight had run his prey to ground. When Parcival’s brotherhood had arrived on-planet, the rebels ran, forcing his Chapter to pursue them like the coursing dogs of Lorin Alpha. It was distasteful work, but necessary.

 

All service is glorious in His name, Parcival reminded himself.

 

Seeing that the newcomer was a fellow Astartes, clad in burnished plates of bronze, the knight lowered his sword but did not sheathe it. He did not recognize the heraldry borne on the warrior’s pauldron and he told him as much.

 

“That is not surprising,” the warrior answered. He descended from his perch and took several steps towards the knight. Parcival backed up, raising his sword anew; the warrior was massive, even by the standards of Astartes, and his armor and weapons were of an unfamiliar mark.

 

The giant warrior paused, eye lenses fixing on the hand flamer aimed at his face. Slowly, the giant unlimbered a spear from his harness. His gaze never wavered.

 

“What manner of creature are you?”

 

The giant laughed, flexing his hand on the haft of his weapon. “The most dangerous kind,” he boomed, before suddenly closing with a leaping thrust of his spear.

 

Parcival only just evaded the full brunt of the blow, taking it on his sword arm. If the spear had been powered, his arm would be gone from above the elbow. As it was, the blow crazed the ceramite there, sending him reeling. Before the knight could recover, the giant battered his hand flamer from his grip. Parcival brought his sword around, artless and full of righteous fury, sinking the blade halfway to the shoulder through his enemy’s strange armor.

 

“Very good,” the giant breathed into Parcival’s face then sent him stumbling with a thunderous head butt. Parcival’s face plate cracked and his vision crazed with static.

 

He fell.

 

“Traitor…” Parcival gasped, staring up at the giant. The warrior shook his head, spear poised for the final thrust.

 

“We are loyal,” he said.

 

“Then why?”

 

The giant shrugged. “Your prowess is well known,” he replied, “and I like a challenge.”

 

**

 

“Mimon,” the vox hissed in the giant’s ear. “You are off-mission – return at once.”

 

Mimon smiled his secret smile, surveying his handiwork: the champion of the Fire Angels would live, though he would not soon forget his failure.

 

“Good fight,” the giant warrior grunted, pulling his spear free and walking away.

[Dumah]

Epilogue: Part 3 - The Gorgon

 

 

“What does it mean?” Jorrid cried aloud, distressed by the strange shapes that squirmed when he looked too closely at their discomfiting angles.

 

His companion shook her head, unable to speak. There was something almost comforting about the pattern of blisters that bubbled and popped on the skin of the only tree left in all the Fens. They eased her suffering some small amount as acid effluvia ate away at her hair and nails, scoring her flesh with sores that wept vivid ichor. Somewhere, deep down, her mind screamed at her to run – that part of her that believed so fervently in the God Emperor’s grace. This was wrong and she knew it…but she could not bring herself to care.

 

Before she realized what she was doing, she had drowned Jorrid in the toxic runoff of the upper vale, watching dispassionately as he gurgled his last and began to break down into his component parts. Zaelia smiled dumbly and tottered upwards against the stream, untroubled by flesh that pealed and popped. Something called her there from the depths of that noisome mist.

 

A shape appeared before her and she cried out in exultation. It was massive, lugubrious, and foetid with age and disease. It had a wide face that smiled kindly, inviting her into its fever-warm embrace.

 

“Come, my child,” it burbled from blistered lips.

 

Zaelia ran to it. She did not see the weapon that killed her, nor the warrior who wielded it. One moment the soul-sick mortal was there, the next her head was not.

 

The Plague Champion harrumphed with displeasure, turning ponderous eyes towards the source. “Ah,” he sighed. “So very like your kind…”

 

Three of the Emperor’s Angels forged upwards against the tides of filth that sought to uproot them. Effluvius smiled and leveled his drooling combi-bolter, blasting the left-most warrior off of his feet and into the muck. His fellows opened up with weapons of their own, covering Effluvius with sheets of liquid fire. He laughed off their pathetic efforts, striding through the flames to come to grips at close range. His plague-fist itched with anticipation.

 

As he grappled with his enemies, he felt a nagging sensation in his hip. The lolling eye that grew from his shoulder swiveled to behold the impact crater there. Another shot coughed from the murk, impacting close-by to the first and blowing a fist sized chunk from symbiotic plating. While his attention was thusly engaged, one of the thin-bloods struck at him with an energized fist, sinking his arm to the elbow in Effluvius’ guts. The Plague Champion hissed in surprise as he felt the first inkling of pain in many centuries. He punished the offender with a stream of acid bile, dredged from deep within his gullet, and chortled happily as the corpse-worshipper’s helm ran like wax, followed closely by his skull. His fellow repaid the plague marine in kind, sinking his gladius to the hilt between armored plates and a third bolter round struck Effluvius in the knee, causing some small amount of unbalance.

 

Effluvius growled, his anger roused now, and crushed the swordsman’s chest with his canker-heavy fist before he could withdraw his blade. All was quiet and still for a moment. Then a bubble burst from the plague champion’s gut and he looked down to find a chainblade protruding from its depths.

 

“How droll,” he snorted before being ripped messily in two from the waist upwards.

 

Brother Sergeant Rhaion watched as the body shed lice and treacle fluids, slowly collapsing in on itself. He had lost his helm in the opening sortie, sustaining serious chemical burns, and was blind in one eye. He smiled grimly, glad for this test of fortitude.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Good job on the battle against the Plague Marine.

[Dumah]

Thank you! I rather enjoyed writing it.