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Lriean kneeled down to pick up the shattered fragments of the soul stone, letting it fall through his fingers before sighing hopelessly. He inspected the ruins around him; they were dank, dark, and foreboding, but none of that had deterred him from arriving in the city of Sojek and finding this subterranean ruin deep within the bowels of the hive city. The cultists that had originally been here had let the place fall to ruin; many of the light fixtures had been busted and flickering in and out of existence, many of the walls had been caved in during the warfare that this place had saw probably years ago.
Why a throne appeared at the end of this chamber was beyond him, this was no longer an age of kings, but one of governors and palaces. He studied the place where Nyst had been laying only a moment before, the Eldar had attempted to dethrone her from her position of power more than once. Just another reason he had come seeking something as important as soul stones in the area. Of course, it wasn’t the only treasure worth discovering here, many Imperial artifacts and templates could be discovered all over this vast planet. However, such things were usually under the guidance and protection of the adeptus mechanicus and they held no love for alien species such as the Eldar.
“Qu’nalan.” He lifted two of fingers to tap into the comm-bead linked to his left ear, listening to the soft static for a moment before a voice registered him.
“Lriean, did you find the stone?” The voice over the other end was a darker tone than his and more hushed.
“I ran into a little trouble, well more than that, but I managed. The stone is useless now.”
“I see. Well get back up here, it’s time to leave this place in search of something else. Qu’nalan out.”
Didn’t Qu’nalan know that there was a war waging out there right now? What new leads could he possibly have that they hadn’t talked about? Well, he would know when he spoke to him in person, time to leave here, whatever this place was.
The Eldar threw his las-gun over his shoulder and began to trek off into the distance.
“Lriean.”
“Huh? Who goes there?” The relic hunter called out, placing a cautious hand on his las-gun. He cast glances into the darkness, yet saw nothing.
“I am only curious as to why you said you do not possess the soul stone of Ar’ka’ram? If you needed aid, you should have called upon me, I would have gladly come with you.” Taryi’s voice carried over the darkness, echoing in the haunting quiet and interrogating him softly.
“No offence, Taryi, but I don’t think your acquired skills would have helped me much.”
Lriean watched the howling banshee emerge from the darkness in the direction he was heading. Her curly auburn hair bounced with every step, threatening to cover her bright jade eyes and the dark inked tattoos partially covering her face. She was clad in sleek armor that fit tightly around her slender frame and she held the two handed executioner in her hands. The howling banshee stood at least two heads over the strangely dressed Lriean, lowering her gaze onto him like a stern mentor rebuking a student who had just made a grave mistake.
“Then what happened?” She interrogated again, curiosity peaked at the actions of her fellow eldar.
“Nyst is what happened, I never thought I’d bump into such a strange demon of legend, but here we are, talking about it after the fact.”
Taryi’s eyes widened a fraction, uttering the name to herself as if contemplating what implications the name had. Then the look in her eyes suddenly steeled into a sterner expression, looking Lriean up and down and examining his current state of being.
“You look no worse for wear. Why is that?”
“She simply left after taking what she wanted, I’m not sure what else I’ve could have done, given the circumstances.”
“Or course not.” The howling banshee stated, unimpressed. “Let us move, I’m sure you desire to leave here as soon as possible.”
The two began to retract their footsteps back towards the way they came, stepping through a ruined corridor with its walls gutted and littered with rotting carcasses and skeletons. On what part of that walls that had held out for all these years had various types of graffiti and messages sprawling across their surface. They soon came across an elevator shaft that would take them out of the dreary pit they had descended into.
“You didn’t by chance find anything of use down here, did you?” Lriean pressed the button according to the highest level he wanted to go and the elevator doors squealed shut.
“No.” Taryi studied him with an incredulous look, examining his face to see if he was being serious.
“Just wondering.” Lriean said distracted, obviously other things were on his mind. “What was Qu’nalan doing before you came down here?”
“Waiting for you.”
A resounding bell ringed within the elevator and the doors came squeaking open, revealing a night sky and towering sky scrapers raising kilometers above ground. They stepped into a small plaza, completed with a small garden and Imperial chapel in the midst of it. There was a massive demon looming around the chapel, about as tall as Lriean himself and built of crimson sinew and muscle. A wicked tongue licked hungrily at the air and beady red eyes stared into their souls from afar. The bloodletter held a demonically forged blade in its right hand, nothing else in its left, but it looked poised and ready to strike.
“Qu’nalan!?” Lriean called out, but there was no answer.
Two more appeared out of the shadows, coming to stand near their comrade and leering as they began to slowly approach. Each of them looked menacing in their own right, but their bulk did not phase Lriean or Taryi, who instantly grabbed their weapons and stormed off into two different directions.
Lriean kicked his las-rifle from single shot to full auto and opened up a salvo of las-bolts that punched the one of the far left- the one nearest him- in the chest several times. The monster took the bullets in stride and laughed confidently at its upstart opponent, roaring out the demonic challenge before three blood letters sprung into a charge of their own. Lriean opened fire again at the one coming towards him, first blasting at the legs and torso before working his way up to the thing’s face. The blood letter shielded his face with the massive bulk of its arm, raising his sword up to cleave Lriean who simply rolled out of the way as he fired.
The Eldar Relic hunter sprang to his feet, ducking beneath an arched swing meant to cleave his head off. He brought his bayonet up, but the blood letter’s arms were still covering its face. Instead he swung the knife on the edge of his las-gun into the things gut, managing to stab twice before it brought its elbow down on his temple and sent spinning away. The demon of Khorne did not let up, swinging its blade around its head before bringing it down in an overhead strike.
Lriean dived and rolled away from the blow, barely managing to not be scathed by it, he threw the las-gun at the demon to temporarily halt its momentum. In that space of time, he drew his shuriken pistol and unleashed a flurry of laser fire that would shred a lesser man in an instant. It merely injured the blood letter, causing it to recoil from Lriean and use its sword as a shield.
Taryi twirled around the first blood letter to reach her, stabbing in with one side of her executioner and impaling the thing in the gut. She remembered to twist before departing the blade from flesh, bringing the blade back around to parry the second blood letter in a shower of sparks. The two power weapons clashed for a few seconds, each one struggling to gain an edge over the other. She flipped backwards before the blood letter could bring his blade back for another strike, cleaving the first blood letter she had engaged in two with an effortless strike.
With a howl of rage, the first demon of the group departed, turning into a fine mist before evaporating into the warp completely. The second seemed undettered, instead raising its blade and roaring triumphantly over the screams of its dying comrade. It waved at the shadows and spoke in a diabolic tongue, loud enough to make her ears reverberate heavily.
“Cursed thing, I’ll slay you and your entire ilk!”
More blood letters came roaring out of the darkness, blades burning brightly with hellfire and murderous intent in their eyes. They stormed forward across the plaza to lock arms with the pair of eldar and claim their souls for Khorne. Similar to the first pack, they split into groups, two for Lriean, the other three for Taryi. They howled like wild animals in the night, already covered in the blood of many innocents.
“Lriean! Taryi! Look out below!” A voice shouted from the rooftops, Qu’nalan stood atop a housing block over-looking the plaza, clad in the armor of the dark reaper and cradling a tempest launcher in his arms.
Not saying anything more, Qu’nalan fired twin rockets into the rushing hoard of blood letters, aiming for the pair that were chasing after Lriean. The first rocket scathed the blood letter that Lriean had been blasting away since the fight began, the other one had landed perfectly between the other two lagging behind. The blast gouged out layers of asphalt and blew apart one of the blood letters in a gory display of blood. The second was flung across the plaza by the blast, twisting an arm and snapping it on impact with the asphalt where Taryi was currently fighting.
Disengaging from combat, the howling banshee gracefully darted from the other blood letters to the injured one, effortlessly leaping over it and inserting one end of her blade between the thing’s spine around the neck. Effectively killing it, she turned to the other three, staring them down as they meant to surround her. A knowing smile crossed her lips and she charged into the three, using her feet to climb up and leap over the more hunched blood letter, she landed in a kneeled position beside one of the reinforcements, taking out its leg below the knee cap.
With no leg to stand on, it naturally collapsed, reaching out for the banshee with the intent of savagely pulling one of her arms off. In a split second reaction, she answered with a quick thrust from her blade into the demon’s gaping mouth, erupting out the other end in a shower of blood. It slowly began to fade into a fine mist, but still maintained a firm grip on her arm.
With a look of shock on her face, she could only watch the other two charge her down, but an idea popped in her head at that moment as she heard the rocket come down. She hastily pulled the rapidly fading body of the blood letter over around her while she hit the ground, covering herself to some extent as the first rocket buried itself deep in one of the blood letter’s gut. It promptly blossomed in an explosion of blood and mist; the shear force sent the second flying and bought her a little more time.
The demon hide around her fading into nothingness, she once again commanded her arm with her own strength, rising to her feet and throwing the blade at the last demon trying to erect itself near the chapel wall. The blade impaled the demon through the stomach, carving itself into the cold metal of the chapel and pinning the blood letter against it.
“Lreian!”
Lriean kicked the kneeling blood letter in the teeth, bringing his bayonet from his re-acquired las- rifle right into the beast’s eye socket. Not even flinching from the grotesque pop within the eye socket, he slid the bayonet out of the gun and proceeded to fire the remainder of his ammunition into the blood letter stuck upon the chapel. The las-bolts hit accurately and in dense succession, repeatedly blasting away at the minion of Khorne’s face until only exposed, bullet ridden brain matter was left in place of a face. Then once again, it faded away.
“Are you two alright?” Qu’nalan asked, but did not stop for an answer. “I’m making my way off this roof top!”
“What’s next, haha, zombies!?”Lriean shrugged at Taryi with a grim smile, wiping the sweat off his face.
“I wouldn’t joke about such things here, who knows, perhaps it will be,” The howling banshee smiled back, shrugging carelessly as well.
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Post Merge: March 5, 2013, 12:44:16 AM
In the future, please use the modify button. Double posting is against the forum rules, and for that reason, the system merged your posts.
“We can move the imperial guard companies up through the Tesian Highway,” Canoness Kari poured over a holographic map of Sojek’s under city with her generals. The tactical display highlighted many different zones, each one of those zones representing allied or non-friendly territory. Within each of those territories a series of troop formations and base-outpost locations dotted the immersive map.
“From there, we can move onto objective 418-68, of operation Spearhead,” She continued, drawling on and on about trivialities of war.
Lyria quietly observed the interior of the command center, studying the mass of adepts, Imperial guard, and agents of the adeptus mechanicus laboring under stressful condition in a sterile, pristine environment. Twice as many servitors were working at the cogitators, or moving and setting up equipment, and working on that blasted telecommunications array that had been down all night. The Imperial guardsmen were also going over their strategic options alongside the Canoness while their bodyguards sat at the doorways and every other secure position listening intently.
“We’ve heard the reports: the Thousand Sons are planet side and are main priority should be sniffing them out.”
Lyria was uncertain as to why so many initiates had been brought into the presence of so many Celestians and Imperial Officers. Even the Adeptus Astartes had sent an envoy Captain to make sure everything was in order for the coming purge. The bodyguards of the Sundered Legion: Veteran squads that fought for well over a century, stood with them at the entrance seemingly interested in only the conversation transpiring between the higher chain of command. Sister Meril had gathered her own adeptus sororitas around a small recess table that were not initiates close to her, intent on discussing other matters. Ameni, Haxta, Helga, Maren, and herself stood with their backs against the cold steel of the walls away from the other squad of sisters.
“We’ve taken heavy losses at the Artaxas Gate, Brother Captain Justilius, I trust you will lead your brothers there.”
Haxta occupied herself with smoking a cigarette with Helga and Maren, chatting quietly amongst themselves about the kills they had made on the way here. Lyria had scored a few kills herself, she remembered fondly the bolter rattling in her arms and spraying death at the horde of people who tried to confront them. There had even been zombies she had blown away in her fury, sparing none of the ill sick with the plague of un-death or just madness. She hadn’t dared challenge anything in close proximity to her in close combat, that was not recommended until one fought with power armor.
“I wish we could speak to the admirals about the situation above our atmosphere in case we require additional supplies and reinforcements from off-world.”
Ameni had been beside her the entire time and they had scythed down many together like wheat the field. Her murderous lust was slaked and she could see that in her eyes now, staring blankly at a data slate in her hands, looking rather board. Lyria wondered how alright she really was, no doubt all that killing had taken a toll on them all, seeing so many dying in such a variety of ways and losing comrades. Some were lost, mostly initiates who had been overrun at their section of the front.
“I wonder how much longer until we’re fully initiated?” Lyria asked Ameni, who finally looked up from her data slate with un-interest.
“Don’t ask me, ask Sister Meril.” She glanced back down to her slate, obviously preoccupied with reading its contents.
“What are you reading?”
“A book of Psalms, why?” Ameni gave her a look of minor annoyance, putting the data slate down for a minute to talk.
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