It had been in captivity for countless centuries, held in its prison with powerful wards and psychic shields by its captors. Those long centuries dragged by with endless questioning and experiments done on its person.
First came the questions. Such simple fools. Where did it come from? What was its agenda? Soon after came the pain, with their crude implements. They cut and they drilled and they probed. They removed its hands. Once they realised the regenerative power of the creature, they soon stopped that practice. The creature’s bodily defense mechanism generating scything talons where once there were hands.
With each question and each answer, the creature of Chaos injected its captor’s demise one word at a time. Oh, they thought they were so clever, so smart! So safe with their wards and their ‘power’. Little did they know the destructive power of knowledge. And so year after year, decade after decade the creature slowly twisted and bent its captors until one fateful day when its plans came to fruition and its captors tore themselves apart. At their last they had tried to destroy the creature. Their fruitless efforts were mocked and laughed at all the while by the creature.
None survived but the creature now, all alone on this planet.
But the creature had made a miscalculation. It had made a fatal error, an assumption. It had thought the shields and wards and spells would dissipate with its captors demise. They had not. But little matter. The creature was patient and the wards could not last forever.
And so it waited and the seasons turned and the stars died and were reborn again and still it waited, searching, always searching for a weakness in the defenses that held it in this prison.
Until one day it found a crack.
With renewed vigor the creature attacked the breach, widening the crack until the first layer shattered, weakening the rest. It knew it was mere years away from freedom. It did not need sleep or rest as mortals thought of it and so it worked day and night on the breach, picking away at the threads one at a time and then the second and third barriers were destroyed. The rest were childs play, and fell away like rotten cloth before its might.
It was free! It could do the work of its master once more! A thousand worlds would be destroyed before the creature was brought to heel but the damage was done and the creature’s task completed.
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Skaven Warrior
The Skaven warrior stalks across a stinking trickle of thick sludge leaking out of the depths of a sewer pipe.
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Patrol
The guardian patrols the regular route of this backwater moon on the galaxy rim.
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The Last Litany of Endless Despair
The breaching pod slammed into the space hulk, cutting deep into it’s twisted body. With a jolt the pod screeched to a stop and opened up into the belly of the hulk. Code named Endless Despair, the space hulk lived up to its name. The five terminators turned on their shoulder mounted spotlights, cutting into the gloom as the decouplers hissed and detached.
With their sergeant taking point, the terminators of the Blood Angels chapter resolutely moved into the oppressive darkness. Their stomping armor drowning out the clunks and hisses of the hulk.
It did not take long for the enemy to attack Hated xenos attacked them soon after their extraction from the breaching pod. The Blood Angels welcomed it. The Sergeant’s power sword thrummed to life and cut down the first, his storm bolter taking the next in the chest. Explosive rounds covered the terminators in gore, their holy armor sullied by the filth.
Suddenly a door exploded inward, a thrashing xenos besetting brother Petrarch. Brother Acrion behind him cut down the twisted this with his lightning claws, the pieces of it’s body splattering to the ground it’s claws still twitching. Without missing a beat, Brother Petrarch turned his heavy flamer to the destroyed door and filled the chamber beyond with purifying flame. Screeches and howls emanated out from the opening eventually diminishing to pitiful squeals as the xenos burned alive.
First to fall was Brother Belarius who held up the rear. A xenos claw burst out of the wall and slashed across his throat, taking off his head in one savage blow. His body fell to its knees, blood spurting out of the exposed stump and slumped to the side against the wall. Storm bolter fire rang out from the survivors covering the wall in exploding shells.
Then silence.
Smoke rose from the barrels of the terminators guns as they waited for any movement, the blood rage rising. Still they controlled themselves, for they were of the first and discipline was firmly entrenched. Hearing nothing, they carried on, marking the resting place of their fallen brother for later extraction.
Twenty minutes later Brother Meros and Petrarch were the next to fall, rushed by several genestealers at once from the rear. Brother Petrarch’s heavy flamer chaotically spraying burning promethium everywhere, covering the ceiling in flames as his ruined chest spilled out it’s life blood. Brother Meros in the midst of slamming his chainfist into the chest of one genestealer was taken out by another, his arm shorn off at the shoulder, quickly followed by his torso.
The sergeant, overtaken by rage at seeing his betherin slain pushed past Brother Acrion and slashed one of the surviving xenos to pieces with this power sword. The warning from Brother Acrion fell dead on his lips as the berzerker Sergeant overextended and fell to slashing claws. But even in his death throes, the Sergeant managed to blow the head and shoulders off of one genestealer and slice another in half with his power sword before he finally succumbed to his wounds. Brother Acrion dispatched the remaining two with his arcing claws. The silence was oppressive. Only Brother Acrion remained.
Stamping down the corridor Brother Acrion watched as a xenos turned the corner and charged towards him. At the same time another genestealer broke out of the ceiling and scuttled down the wall. Brother Acrion began the litany of battle, bellowing iit fruitlessly at his foes.
I am the edge of His Sword,
I am the tip of His Spear,
I am the mail about His Fist,
The Emperor’s chosen,
Covered in the Blood of Sanguinius,
I will smite my enemies,
I will purge the heretic,
I will burn the witch,
For I am the Emperor’s judgement.He splayed out his claws as another genestealer burst out of the floor, ready to deal out the Emperor’s justice against the hated xenos.
Brother Acrion fell to the ground as a claw pierced his heart, his litany still thundering in his head.
