Wired to the beslubbering teeth right now.
+++++++++++++++++++++
slowly...
...sensation.
was this death
the slow beat of the universe
an in-out in-out
pulse
liquid surroundings
heavier the air
Open the eyes
and it's red.
This wasn't...
wasn't...
life.
It was
he can tell by the itch
This wasn't life
This wasn't life
A compulsion
a compulsion to move
to move on orders
a sudden manic compulsion
Alive under incomplete anesthetic
screaming under the living scalpel
I should be dead
the taste of blood in my mouth
the blood of another
my own
I've been tied up with staples
stapled up the ruined husk
This was my hope
to never wake
the future gleam is a skinning knife
hope for nothing
I always searched for the worst of things
I took them into me and they poisoned me
the day to day
million deaths we die
Better to end it.
The choice of three drinks,
but he's not at all thirsty.
March on, with raging thirst.
Keep marching, and never think.
Kill the father, kill the mother.
I killed my only friend
he wanted to die
He's alone now as he marches
endless sand, for every grain there is a universe
We are doomed to death and sadness
doubt, hate and fear
by simply being who we are
And they tell us to be ourselves.
Why? is the question.
A question.
The question.
Why question?
Who's going to answer?
Suddenly slamming upwards,
and outwards.
I've been here before.
The urge comes on again to move
to kill kill kill kill kill kill
swivel truth to bear and set off marching.
_
Roy felt numb.
The sentinels shambled and bopped from the electroclash launching chutes, lascannons searching. He was unsettled by the design of these, they had so little room for a pilot. Inside would be like a... coffin. Like a coffin. A coffin. Roy shuddered.
This was necromancy, the quiet dead on forced marches.
Hypnotic trance, the machine a reducing valve through which life was funneled, to protect them from being overwhelmed. Were they aware?
Mono. He'd pay for this.
Unlife, death inside metal.
Domo and Bleeder were trapped. The thought of it was abhorrent to Roy.
The Commissar smiled.
He was glad of the fire support.
They would hold the far right flank, and deliver the killing blow against the deviant witches, the Emperor's light shining from a thousand torches in the darkness, blasting the blackness into oblivion. Victory was beyond doubt.
The sentinels bounded forward, serving even in death.
The Commissar, spurred on by this thought, lead the squad into position over jagged rock and infinite desert. They would fight.
+++++++++
+++++++++
It hurts to set them free.
the end of nights we tried, together.
to set ourselves free
beautiful. to set you free.
_
The Falcon spiraled down, holo-shields down, wings utterly clipped.
Roy heard chitin clash against rock, then rapid footsteps. Far, far too many.
Striking Scorpions, another cruel aspect, a dark insectid countenance. How were they this close already? Damned Eldar magicks.
The Eldar skimmer whined as it grazed the ground, throwing up sparks where it glanced volcanic rock and swirling dust where it touched grey sand dunes. It finally ploughed into a black outcrop, the sound reminiscent of a tin can being crushed underfoot. The sentinel, seemingly satisfied with the kill, loped away over the dunes, leaving Roy and his squad alone and isolated.
Joy Enders was voxing for immediate reenforcement, but the clatter and whine of shuriken cut short her urgent message, more Scorpions scuttling over rock and sand towards the entrenched veterans. Her last thoughts were of Glass and dying alone, as she lay bleeding and broken into eternity. Chainswords roared the fury of Khaine into the night, and the Scorpions scurried from cover to cover towards the trenches.
_
Haze slammed into cover against a jagged outcrop, the empty grenade launcher drum clattering against stone, even as fresh one fed the thirsty chamber. Plasma screamed to her right, new suns calving from guns, at least one Scorpion too slow to dodge or get into cover. His armour melted like wax, his skeleton reduced to burned matchsticks. She primed the new rounds and fired into the advancing swarm, delayed action krak rounds impaling another and reducing him to bloody gobbets no bigger than a clenched fist.
She took a deep breath, held it, and burst once more from cover, momentarily exposed. She was rewarded by a shot clipping her helmet and boot, the majority of lethal discs clattering on the bleak stones behind her. They were close, armour clacking and and shuriken screaming as she dived into her fire team's trench. Nadal had hefted aside the lascannon and picked up his shotgun, nodding to her. Egal held 6 separate knives in quaking hands. Mute gave him a kick and he picked up his lasgun, trying to shake out the speed, fear and adrenaline.
The combead crackled static, Haze expectant on the word. A phantom voice echoed and footsteps got closer and closer, chainswords whining manically, rearing up, ready to deliver the fatal sting. The word. Say the word!
The Commissar hesitated a moment.
'Go'.
Haze, Egal, Nadal and Mute popped up and opened fire, Roy's fireteam responding in sympathy. Plasma, las and bolter fire cut down the poised Scorpions, but still they came on, too desperate to kill and deliver the mortal blow, too late and too little. They reached the lines, Mute eviscerated in a second, shredded by needle fire, then hacked to bits by savage clawing blows. Nadal parried a swipe by pure luck and clubbed a female warrior to the ground, helm shattered and gasping in the ether, still trying to rise but crushed under foot by a million shotgun darts, 500 years ended, bleeding and brutal.
The Exarch howled and came at Haze, rending a slow, lethal path. Everything froze except the clawed gauntlet tearing through the air towards her head, time dilated and the world turned grey. This was it. A massive clash, sounding apocalyptic, shook her from the daze, a yellow black wasp stained chainsword swatting away the power fist and severing it from the limb. The arm convulsed on the ground, still riven with electric killling impulse. The Commissar drew his bolt pistol with frenetic theatricality, and blew starlight through the head of the Exarch. The Scorpion-god stood for a moment, then a cold wind blew and dead machinelight flowed through the little bloody hole, whispering death to the body. The Exarch collapsed to his knees, the way of the warrior proving futile at long, long last.
Haze fell and held her knees. That was death, she thought as she looked skyward, terrible wheeling stars no comfort. This was still life. Beautiful... to be alive. Nadal relaxed visibly and sighed over the combead, dropping to his knees and falling face-
The knife ripped from the human throat, black red life spilling into the sand.
The last Scorpion screamed in the night, at last all human horrors given substance, terror, death and pain personified. Glass rushed with the plasma rifle, too fast, and the Scorpion took another fatal swipe even as he fired, vital magnetic containment fields suddenly absent. The rifle went critical and roiling death vomited from the truncated barrel, spilling out in a curtain of deathly heat. Haze flinched from the backwash, and tried to catch Glass as he fell, hands burned all to cinders, white bone poking from carbonised flesh. He wasn't screaming, which struck Haze as odd. Only gore and ruin meet her eyes as she looked where his head should have been, and she swiveled to face death. The terror had avoided the plasma wave and danced behind the flame curtain, decapitating the wounded Glass as he fell. Egal emerged from behind the rapidly diminishing sheet and took potshots, hitting the creature in the abdomen. It shuddered, and shook off the laser fire, armour proof against the Emperor's finest.
It screamed hate and defiance, mandiblasters knocking Egal off his feet and he lay, smoking. The thing turned to Haze, already shaken, and raised the terrible rasping shredder-sword, unholy, ungodly. The Commissar's chainsword bit deep into the shoulder of the thing, spraying Haze with blood and shards of armour. It turned to the furious Commissar, right arm hanging by worm-like sinews, bleeding desperately, yet undefeated.
It stepped inside his guard and brought a thundering kick against his torso, knocking him well back and leaving him bereft of breath. It followed up on the charge with a series of blade patterns, each sequence harder and harder to defend against. The Commissar felt himself waver as he took a step back, at the crest of a volcanic offshoot, towering over the edge of a fifty foot drop into the endless sands.
He was in the grip of light headed fatalism, convinced that this was the end and he would die fighting in the name of the Emperor. The thing had tired and was flagging in the attack, but the Commissar was too wounded and winded to take the offensive. A bad parry and the chainsword cut across his chest, leaving him open to the coup de grâce, to finish life itself. It raised its arm in phyrric victory, knowing all too well it would die here too.
A crump sounded from behind them and the thing staggered, a black spike embedded in its back. It turned, an accusing finger pointing at Haze and it fell pathetically from the cliff edge.
'A dud. Who would have guessed it?'
+++++END PART TWO+++++++