The guardian patrols the regular route of this backwater moon on the galaxy rim.
-
Skaven Warrior
The Skaven warrior stalks across a stinking trickle of thick sludge leaking out of the depths of a sewer pipe.
-
The Emperor’s Light
In the four hundred years that Sergeant Efuuy had been serving the Emperor, he had seen many of his brothers perish. Across a thousand worlds he and his kind roamed the stars killing and dying in turn, as was their eternal duty. The old stories always told of grand, noble deaths. Great speeches and heroic efforts were portrayed, but all too often this was not the reality. All to often real combat saw death come suddenly and without warning. A gurgling rasp replaced the noble speeches, a tumbling head supplanted heroic deeds.
The mission was much like any other. Destroy the insidious chaos cult that had murdered the planetary governor and reestablish order. The strike team landed and dealt out death and destruction on the Emperor’s enemies without remorse. Seven days and nights the fighting had gone on and enemies of the Emperor were slain one after the other by the Sergeant and his brothers nine. That was until they reached the bowels of the palace, for there lay madness. The cultists in their zealotry had performed dark rites, that no man should know. Out of the shadows abominations rose as the rites were completed, their first action to slay the cultists and feed on their souls.
The stalwart warriors were not deterred. Their faith drove them on, hacking at the insane faces and limbs of horrors not of this reality. The first to fall was Brother Rewul, a deamon lashing out, devouring his head and shoulders in one swift bite. His body fell pathetically to the ground as his life blood gushed out on the flagstones but still the warriors drove on.
As the space marines fought on, the chaos of battle grew thick and soon the warriors were divided, fighting for their lives. And on they fought, for they knew no fear. But fearless or not, they were not invincible and so the Sergeant watched the flat lines flare in his helmet as one by one his brothers perished to the onslaught of evil that oppressed them on all sides. On and on the Sergeant fought, barely even realizing he was the last. And still he fought until he found himself a slight reprieve as the monstrosities he slaughtered reeled back.
And then all went black. There was no pain, no feeling at all, just the endless dark of nothingness. Just as suddenly light flared. Painful, searing light. His eyes opened and he was back in the depths. Out of nowhere a blinding light shone down on the faithful warrior. He could feel his vision slowly fading but he could not look away, for in the lights embrace possessed him. Just as he though he could bear no more, the light intensified and he flung his arms back as an entity possessed him. But this was no entity of dark chaos, but the Emperor’s spirit himself. “Worry not my child for you have fought faithfully”. Tears streamed down the warrior’s face as the light enveloped and overtook him. The light was all and he was the light. Rapture and pain in equal measure over took him and as suddenly as it appeared, the light was gone and the warrior with it.
-
Experiment 295-E
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.
