# Beyond the Fringe



## LongfangFenrika93 (Jan 22, 2012)

*Beyond the Fringe*​
_Darkness follows us everywhere...
_
*

The beautiful warrior had a single tear snaking down his perfectly formed cheek as he stepped out onto the screeching world. River-ways of blood and gore passed the warrior by, filled with haunting screams and laughs of hysteria. Faces formed and dissolved like some child's nightmare, and the air was electrifying in its obscene intensity. Ghost-like forms surrounded him. His horizon curved terrifyingly upwards, the sheer scale of its impossibility enough to rip the sanity from any man. The pink-tinged wind swirled in cyclones of dust and grit before him and in the skies above his head. The ground cracked as he took each step, the soil parched and thirsty. Crimson puddles congealed in stinking pools around him, and the shattered armour of a million battles littered the ground before him. 

He turned his glittering black eyes back towards his shuttle-craft, which began to sink into soil beneath it. Even though the ground was as hard as steel it swallowed the small craft. As he gave the shuttle a second glance, he realised it was being devoured by the hungry ground, its armoured plating absurdly and tortuously whining as it was enveloped. 

His long, ornately designed black cloak whipped and cracked against his ceramite-covered legs in the fierce wind, his jet as night hair similarly ruffled. His thick hands gripped the wondrously crafted bolt-pistol tight to his side, and his head was tilted upwards into the bruised purple and pink sky. 

The Eye of Terror swirled ever overhead, and out of the bloodstained mists, Corvus Corax watched as his traitorous brothers marched towards him in all their corrupted glory. 

His eyes sank down towards his open-palmed left hand, as if scrutinising the shameful creations they had helped build. 

'For the Emperor', said the Raven.

***


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## Dave T Hobbit (Dec 3, 2009)

Engaging glimpse of a chaos landscape; you have added unnatural elements without going overboard.

It is very short; are you planning on adding to it?


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## LongfangFenrika93 (Jan 22, 2012)

yeah man just short for time, thought i start it and see whereit goes


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## LongfangFenrika93 (Jan 22, 2012)

Corvus' lightning sheathed sword cut through clear air as he swung for his traitorous kin. His stumble to the parched ground was greeted with bursting, hysterical cackling from a million different directions. His brow furrowed as he studied the six apparitions stood before him. 

Magnus stood apart from the others, ever watching, ever mindful. His aura was a majestic hue of floating, shifting ethereal colours, his form barely visible. His great peircing eye watched Corax as he gathered himself slowly. Futher still stood the Night Haunter, surrounded by darkness and despair. As the Raven set his eyes upon him, the corrupted air grew cold, and the sky dimmed. Eyes, blacker than night, were filled with the dread of futures yet to pass. 

Bunched together, crowded like a gang of labourers or a squad of disgruntled soldiers, stood the vilest, and most twisted betrayers of humanity. Angron, the World Eater, whose name inspired fear and horror across the length and breadth of the Imperium, heaved angrily. His face was warped into a veneer of sheer brutality, all semblances of his former nobility shredded. He regarded Corax with unforgiving eyes, anger held in check by the merest of threads. Beside him stood a hulking leviathan of pistons and hissing steam. Raw anger, of a different kind from his red brother, emanated from this avatar of war, a combination of mechanical abomination and gene-forged terror. Perturabo stood, staring, unblinking into broken sunlight. 

In regal form, a purple and gold-clad ceramite figure stood, his cuirass chased with carvings of ancient battles philosophical works. A shock of white hair, white beyond marble and the terran clouds of old, fall across the perfect being's broad shoulders. Fulgrim stood high, his shimmering sword never far from his side. In this case, he held it asif to support his weight, or his guilt. Corax couldn't decide. 

'Where is Horus? Where is my beloved brother?' Corvus said coldly. 'I would show him the error of his ways.' His thick fingers brushed the hilt of his power sword ever so slightly. 

'He couldn't make it.' Said a chuckling voice, arising from behind the gathering. Lorgar shimmered as he spoke, his bronze skin glinting in the light. 'He is bringing illumination to our Father's empire.'

'He is bringing death and destruction, are you mad?' Corax raised his voice higher in desperation. 'Are you all mad? What have you become?' 

'You would not belie-'

'Be quiet, Traitor. I will face you now, each one of you, and put you in the ground for this betrayal.' 

'Little bird, you are here as our guest. One word and our masters will tear you apart, molecule by molecule.' Said Perturabo, his voice metallic and emotionless. 

'No one is my master, Iron Warrior. Not the Emperor, not Horus, not these Gods. I am Angron, Eater of Worlds!' As if emphasising this, Angron crushed a small skull under his enormous boot. It popped and crunched, like an eggshell. At one point, the Night Haunter laughed his despairing laugh. 

'Enough!' Corax roared, his blood boiling. 'You will all die the death of a traitor, alone and forgotten, for this madness.'

It was Magnus that spoke this time, his voice soft and lost. 'Let me show you, brother, what lies beyond the realms of reality and time. Let me show you the future which haunts us all.' 

*


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## LongfangFenrika93 (Jan 22, 2012)

Corvus Corax, Primarch of the XIX Legion, opened his eyes slowly. Cold air hung heavy over his shoulders. The scene before him was black, burnt and dead. Death a hundred years old. He stood on ruptured pipes and shattered bones. Bones of all creatures, all species and all beings. The sky was a grim yellow-grey, sick and pregnant with corruption. 

Ruined masonry littered the landscape and filled the horizon. However, ahead, towering over the ancient battlefield in all its twisted glory, was an enormous palace. It reached above even the highest cloud, its broken spires piercing the tired sky. Glittering gold and platinum plates hung loose and solitary, hinting at the monument's former glory. 

_+You know this place, Corvus+_ 

The voice in his mind was like a stab of grating ice, a glacier pulsing through his brain. His head roared as his superhuman biology tried to cope with such a saturation of his senses. Smothering his growing headache, Corax gathered himself. 

'Magnus, show yourself, traitor!' Corvus bellowed. 'Where are we? Where have you brought me?'

_+Don't you recognize home, brother?+_

***

The walk to the outer limits of the shattered Imperial Palace took little under ten minutes, for the Primarch's heightened stamina took him over the field of destruction quicker than any mortal man. 

As he got closer and closer to the ruin of his Father's great seat, he became wary. Great banners depicting the Emperor as the Savior of Mankind lay strewn across the rubble, torn and frozen and forgotten. Corax grimaced, the Emperor wasn't a god, he had said so himself. He realized he was walking upon the tattered marble pathway leading to Eternity Gate, but it was a sorry shadow of its former glory. Corax's heart ached at such a site. The triumph of Humanity's ingenuity forgotten and destroyed. Blood still stained the walls and the crumbling stone of the pathway, and the lonely Primarch allowed a small tear to fall. 

Statues, majestic despite half of them broken on the ground, dominated the remainder of the path. Corax actually had to climb nimbly over the faces of his brothers, grimacing as he did so. Eleven statues there where, although there were only nine figures. Two bases unadorned. Two brothers lost and forgotten. 

'Eleutheryos and Usil. I could use your blades now, brothers.' Corax thought absently. He trudged on, sloughing through more wreckage and despair, climbing and squeezing past fallen piping and ruined cables. The air within the Inner Sanctum was colder, darker than outside, and shimmering silhouettes flickered and danced as Corax disturbed the light spilling in. 

Corax stopped. This wasn't right. He turned to go back, but something nagged at his mi- *reveal me*. The iron force of the voice was stronger than Magnus'. More familiar. He continued up through crumbled stone steps, their worn gold darkened to a grey bronze, splashed with the brown swears of Astartes' vital fluids. Where skeletons had littered the walk to the Imperial Palace, and carpeted the marble pathway, they were now absent. A glowing, but fading white light tempted him ever onward.

A giant Golden Throne waited for Corax at the summit of the dais. Humming and choking, spitting exotic energy onto the ravaged floor, it was shining, literally shining with a faint outline, as if not quite there. Corvus' eyes rose upward, following the blackened and broken bones sitting upon the failing machinery. 

Corax dropped to his knees. His hands opened uselessly, power sword and bolt pistol slipping into the dust. Forgetting himself, the Primarch of the XIX Legion wept heavily and relentlessly. Tears streaked down his charcoal-black dust-covered ceramite plate. He ripped his solid armor off unceremoniously, the thuds of it dropping to the solid ground echoing throughout the remnants of the hall. He met his Father's eyes, or the husks of where they should have been. 

He saw everything.

*


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