# Desolace



## Mossy Toes (Jun 8, 2009)

Following the announcement by BL that they have gone through the story submissions they've received and contacted the authors they're interested in getting the next stage of stories from, I am left with the shells of several stories that I like very much. Here is the start of the first; the one that burns within me most brightly to be written. Expect to see more installments soon.

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_Desolace_

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_"Duty is the altar upon which men bleed."
- Anonymous_

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The Adeptus Arbites Rhinos rolled across the yard and slewed to a halt, spraying gravel. Marshal D'Albeqaas glanced through the view slit again, surveying the deserted minehead. Nobody in the watch post. No work crews being shepherded from the living quarters to the mineshafts or back by his men.

So it wasn't a technical fault that had caused the mine to go silent. It wasn't some irritated machine spirit that refused to cooperate or a broken transmitter. Something stranger was at work here, and he'd be damned if he knew what.

Nothing to it, then. “We disembark,” he said into his helmet vox. “Keep your eyes open for any sign of movement. Be prepared for hostiles. Until proved otherwise, we assume the worst—that the convicts overwhelmed the garrison and are lying in ambush.”

His Rhino's doors slid open and the squad moved out with crisp discipline, covering angles with their shotguns and keeping a wary eye on the buildings and three cavernous shaft-mouths. D'Albeqaas followed. The heat, he knew, would have felt like a palpable wave were it not for his environ-sealed suit of carapace armor. The armor was a variant of Arbites gear not usually issued, but considered a necessity for the operation of these equatorial penal mines. Without proper protection, Myria's blazing sun would cook a man within minutes.

It was too quiet. The only noise was the clatter of his soldiers; the subdued rumble of the idling Rhinos, and the faint whistling of the wind as it cut itself across the jagged ridgeline. No machinery thrummed beneath the earth; no regular station reports crackled across the vox network.

“Proctor Gaur,” D'Albeqaas said, “Take Squads Beta and Epsilon and check the installation. The rest of you with me—we secure the mineshafts, one squad each.” His boots crunched on the gravel as he started to lead his men forward. The mine was still disconcertingly still. D'Albeqaas checked his shotgun, making sure it was ready for anything. If the mine was occupied by hostiles, now would be the time that they made their move, so he had to be-

Wild shrieks shattered the sweltering silence. Workers burst from the mine's gaping shaft-mouths, their bare flesh exposed to the blistering heat. They sounded utterly unhinged: not crying out in of pain, but howling with insane, boundless rage.

'Address!' barked D'Albeqaas. His teams of arbitrators drew into tight lines and raised their riot shotguns. His own squad was farthest forward, so would bear the brunt of the wave. What was this madness? The heat would char the miners' skin in minutes; every breath would sear their lungs. 'Respond!'

Shotguns roared, spraying the oncoming mob with buckshot. Penal miners staggered, but none fell. The front rank had been bloodied, but their charge continued unfazed. The arbitrators fired again. Several miners collapsed, but the press of bodies carried most of the injured forward. As the enemy closed the last few meters, D'Albeqaas's men let their third and final volley fly to devastating effect.

The five arbitrators in front locked their riot shields _en echelon_ and braced themselves as the mob crashed into them. The thunderous impact nearly swept them off their feet. Shotgun blasts from D'Albeqaas and the rear rank blew miners back, relieving the pressure on the front and freeing them up to swing their power mauls.

Miners died, their flesh roasted by electrostatic discharges; holes blasted in their torsos; their bones broken; and their limbs severed. Those slain were swiftly replaced by more of the crazed criminals, whose charge spilled around the edges of the small arbitrator formation. They clawed at the arbitrator' unguarded sides as the squad shifted to meet the foe. One arbitrator, then a second, was torn down, dragged out of line and into the voracious, grasping mob, before the squad could reform around D'Albeqaas into a bristling, deadly ring.

Crazed penal miners piled over the broken corpses of their compatriots and each others' flailing bodies to get at the squad. They tore at the arbitrators with their already heat-scorched hands, their crude weapons, and even their jaws.

The arbitrators fought back, pumping shell after shell into the writhing mob and lashing out with their power mauls. D'Albeqaas saw the other arbitrator squads approaching the melee, weapons readied. The Rhinos' pintle-mounted storm bolters stitched bloody furrows through the mob.

D'Albeqaas blew the face off another lunging attacker and his shotgun clicked empty. He clubbed the next miner, a scrawny woman, back and fumbled for his holstered bolt pistol. An armored face jerked into sight, a man wearing a standard arbitrator half-helm and armor—not one of D'Albeqaas's enforcers, who all wore sealed masks and rebreathers. A throne-damned looter; it had to be. The man lashed out with a flaring power maul and shattered the neck of the arbitrator beside D'Albeqaas.

D'Albeqaas cursed and lunged forward, grabbing the man's arm and attempting to disarm him. His opponent batted his grip aside with a standard Arbites counter, and D'Albeqaas jerked away.

This was no miner in stolen gear. Here stood one of the mine's original, conditioned arbitrators, fallen as far into madness as his penal charges. The traitor laughed madly at D'Albeqaas.

Blind, unreasoning fury surged through D'Albeqaas, and he leapt from the relative safety of his squad's formation to lash out with his shotgun. He swung his gun by the grip, as if it were a child's bat, and knocked the arbitrator back.

The power maul came around to parry his second blow, but D'Albeqaas had expected that. He grabbed the enforcer's wrist, yanking his opponent close, and rammed his armored forehead into the man's bare chin.

The man staggered back again, spitting blood and teeth. His lips were already blackened and splitting from the deadly heat, but his face was still locked in a crazed grimace.

D'Albeqaas didn't let him recover his balance. He swung the shotgun again, slamming its full weight into the enforcer's face. The man dropped, and D'Albeqaas followed him to the ground. The marshal rammed the shotgun butt repeatedly into the enforcer's mouth and nose.

The man was surely dead, but that didn't matter to D'Albeqaas. He kept pounding at the corpse. This scum had attacked him, killed one of his men, and broken his holy oath of service! Rage coursed through D'Albeqaas's veins as he smashed the enforcer's face into a pulp.

Another miner crashed into D'Albeqaas from behind, knocking him off the fallen man and to the ground. The miner landed atop him, scrabbling at his helmet. D'Albeqaas pistoned his fist up, knocking the wind out of the man, rolled aside, and grabbed the dead traitor's discarded power maul. He scrambled back to his feet and slammed the maul down, dispatching the miner. Another tried to tackle D'Albeqaas from behind, tearing at his helmet again with reaching, grabbing hands. He roared with frustration, shouldered back into the assailant, and whirled to crush the wretch.

A shotgun blast removed the back of his new-found challenger's head. Black-armored forms, D'Albeqaas's men, marched past, their guns barking.

He pushed away his bloodlust and looked around, taking stock of the battlefield. Corpses of more than a hundred miners littered the ground, interspersed by the occasional carapace-armored figure. Some of the latter were his men, but more...could no longer be counted such.

As the last of the miners were dispatched, vox reports of casualties filtered in. Five dead, three of which from his squad. Three arbitrators had lost their helmets and were being rushed into the environ-sealed Rhinos. A handful more had been incapacitated. Several minor injuries.

The enemy welcoming party had decimated his five squads. There were far more than this hundred penal workers stationed here, he knew, too. Closer to six times that, plus forty arbitrators. If they had all turned to this inexplicable madness, considered D'Albeqaas with horror...

The necessary cleansing would be bloody.

Bloody.

_Blood_. The word resonated in his mind and dragged his gaze downward. The red, iron-rich soil was greedily drinking in the blood _bloodblood_ of the fallen and running into depressions in the plaza's flat, dusty ground.

Depressions shaped almost like...sigils.

Throne of Terra, no.

'Get back!' D'Albeqaas howled into his voxbead. 'Fall back to the Rhinos!'

The sigils flared with unholy light and convulsed, sending a shudder through the ground and through his gut. The blood _bloodbloodblood_ was a ritual, a God-Emperor damned summoning-

Reality shrieked and the gore-soaked earth, unnaturally rich and dark, swam upward into shapes.

Terrible, terrible shapes.

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## Serpion5 (Mar 19, 2010)

An excellent beginning. :grin:

Sorry to hear BL didn't take it, but their loss is our gain it seems.


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## Mossy Toes (Jun 8, 2009)

Definitely. I've been writing up a storm on this--3k words just today, which is something I don't do very often. Here, I'll post up the next wee segment for you. Juuust for you.

(I'll be honest--I should proofread this before I post it. So instead I'll post it and proofread it tomorrow morning, it being rather late here. Sorry if there are some clumsy phrasings/repetition/faulty sentences in here that won't be come 12 hours. I think that the rest of the update makes up for it, though  )


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## Mossy Toes (Jun 8, 2009)

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Blood and blood-soaked earth coalesced into pillars that coagulated into hulking crimson figures. Bulging muscles flowed fluidly into place, distorting flesh. Jagged black blades and horns sprouted in instants. Gaping, fang-toothed maws split the faces of these daemons, from which unraveled slavering tongues. Their skin was slick with the ichor of their birth, and their eyes and mouths burned with an infernal internal fire. Their faces and forms were those of the predator incarnate, spilled from the Archenemy's deepest hells and mankind's oldest nightmares. Nearly thirty of these beasts rose, scattered across the length and breadth of the yard.

This happened in a mere handful of seconds. The nearest creature leapt into D'Albeqaas's fleeing squad with a fluid grace, it's blade licking out to decapitate Proctor Zyphes then ram home into the gut of another arbitrator. The hellblade pierced through the carapace armor as if it were a sheet of foil. D'Albeqaas screamed in horror and rage and lunged toward it with his power maul. He had no illusions about survival. All that he could do was buy his men, his squad, time to escape.

The blood-soaked beast flowed around his swing with grace and ease. It tore its blade from the stomach of the already-dead arbitrator and lashed out with shocking, blurred speed. D'Albeqaas parried desperately, flailing out in defensive. The force of the sword hitting his parry threw him backward. His carapace armor groaned. The shock maul in his hand shattered, its internal workings spraying in an arc of small mechanical pieces and lubricant. Sweat stung D'Albeqaas's eyes, blinding him. He fired his bolt pistol wildly at the beast, attempting to ward away the follow-up blow he knew was already on its way.

The shots bought him the time he needed to stagger into a guard position and gather his bearings. The daemon hissed at him, its long tongue flickering. Mocking amusement danced in its eyes. The marshal knew he couldn't survive another such brief exchange of flurry of blows.

A trio of shotgun blasts tore into the beast, ripping holes in its unnatural flesh. It shrieked and turned its attentions back to D'Albeqaas's squad, lunging past him in a blur to open one of the gunners, Arbitrator Harbess, from waist to collar with a slash of its sword. Harbess toppled back, flailing.

D'Albeqaas leveled his pistol and rapid-fired into the beast's back, blowing fist-sized craters with his bolts. It shrieked, stumbling, and lurched toward another of D'Albeqaas's squad. That arbitrator back-stepped, barely avoiding the flickering blade, and pumped a shotgun round into the daemon's face. It fell, gushing torrents of blood back into the earth.

Screams over the vox-net—screams D'Albeqaas had been unable to notice while fighting for his life. Squad Delta was surrounded, being hacked to bits by half a dozen of the beasts. Proctor Bouwde and Squad Gamma were similarly beset. The proctor himself had, incredibly, slain two of the creatures before a third cleaved his legs from his body. It threw his flailing torso into the air and he was tossed from monster to monster in a horrific game of sport. Proctor Gaur, meanwhile, had marshaled Squads Beta and Epsilon with commendable speed and gunned down those beasts closest to them. He was leading his squads back to the Rhinos at a full march, laying down covering fire to support Gamma.

More blood-soaked daemons were forming even as the battle raged, sloughing from liquid up off the ground into their obscene, unnatural forms. More, certainly, than were being slain.

Another quintet of the daemons loped rapidly toward D'Albeqaas and Squad Alpha. The arbitrators leveled arms, blasting away at the creatures with shotguns and killing one through sheer weight of fire, but D'Albeqaas knew it wouldn't be enough. These things were too tough, too agile, and too numerous.

Engines roared. A Rhino smashed into the creatures, crushing one and forcing the others to scramble aside. D'Albeqaas seized the opportunity to pick off another with a pair of well-aimed bolt shells, blowing apart its skull.

Another Rhino pulled to a halt behind him and his men, slewing to the side to give them access to the side door. “Get in!” shouted the driver, revving the engine. D'Albeqaas and his survivors were quick to do so, dragging the badly-injured Harbess into the vehicle.

“Gamma!” D'Albeqaas shouted, and the driver gunned the vehicle toward the beleaguered squad, not pausing to close its doors. Another member of his squad, Arbitrator Mycot, scrambled up the hatch to the pintle-mounted bolter.

D'Albeqaas assessed the field again. Two of the Rhinos were picking up Squads Beta and Epsilon, but the fifth vehicles had been carved apart by massed hellblades—detracked, its doors chopped open, and its driver butchered. As D'Albeqaas watched, the last standing member of Squad Delta was cleaved in two by one of the daemons. Another grabbed one of the four standing members of Squad Gamma and tore into him, tearing through carapace armor and into flesh with long, powerful talons.

A sustained burst of bolt fire from Mycot tore the daemon to shreds. The Rhino drove the others back with its bulk as it slid to a halt by the three surviving members of Squad Gamma. They staggered into the vehicle and it was rolling again, spinning around to get out. Mycot blazed away above the hatch, pounding more daemons to a pulp through weight of bolter fire.

The Rhino's doors began to shudder shut, but a last sight stuck in D'Albeqaas's horrified mind: Proctor Bouwde, his legs lost, his armor shredded, his exposed flesh deeply scored by claw-marks and roasting in the heat—but still alive. He reached beseechingly toward the receding Rhino as still more daemons approached him from every side.

Blood sprayed from above, trickling down into the troop compartment. Mycot slumped, slipping down the turret well—missing his head and right arm. A daemon peered down through the open hatch, hissing from its perch atop the careening Rhino. D'Albeqaas cursed, firing up through the hole.

The daemon screeched and lurched back. The Rhino's driver swerved hard and the daemon toppled off its perch. D'Albeqaas clambered forward through the Rhino's hold to the ladder, pushed Mycot's body aside, and climbed up himself.

The mine was receding. The four surviving Rhinos were driving away as fast as their machine spirits allowed, easily outdistancing the daemons that were loping after them. As D'Albeqaas watched, the beasts gave up, staring hatefully after the receding arbitrators.

D'Albeqaas slumped, exhausted and aching, as the Rhinos wound their way down the hillside. They had done it. At a grievous cost, to be certain—he had lost more than half of his command—but they had survived. They had escaped Hell, and lived to tell the tale.

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## Serpion5 (Mar 19, 2010)

Nice. A very close call there.  

One thing though, I was under the impression that a bloodletter was physically unable to relinquish its blade? Or did it simply use its off hand?


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## Mossy Toes (Jun 8, 2009)

Now that you mention it, I think I've heard that too. So, it, ah, used its hand. And that's one of the things I'll be tweaking slightly.

Thanks for reading!


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## Mossy Toes (Jun 8, 2009)

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The Rhinos juddered across the roasted rocky terrain, carrying the surviving arbitrators in their iron bellies. The setting crimson sun glared harshly down, as if in admonition of the arbitrators' failure.

Marshal D'Albeqaas sat alone at the front end of the hold, his armor coated in a film of gore. The heat, in the brief time before they had sealed the Rhino to protect the injured arbitrators, had boiled away the wetness, leaving a residue of flaking blood and caked viscera. When he shifted, he shed a fine rain of dried blood. The blood of his own men. Vomit rose in his craw at the recollection, and he choked it back. O Emperor, that such things could exist in this galaxy-

His hands were shaking and he couldn't still them. He stared at them for several blank seconds, then pressed them to the bench on his either side and looked around at the arbitrators in this Rhino. Those few that had survived the massacre, the butchery. All six of them. Six survivors out of twenty, and one of them slowly dying. Perhaps Beta and Epsilon had gotten off more lightly. What he had seen in the yard indicated as much—but he didn't dare get his hopes high.

Harbess was a mess. D'Albeqaas didn't know if he would manage to make it back to Aquinas Base. Arbitrator Sheria, from Squad Gamma, was doing what she could to make Harbess comfortable—insofar as such a thing was possible wearing full carapace and being in the stifled interior of the Rhino.

He ought to comfort them, his survivors. They needed him now more than ever. He ought to at least speak to them, to assure them that their fallen comrades would be avenged. To tell them that the Emperor was with them even now. But what could he say that wouldn't ring patently false. The Emperor here in this pit of despair, this ragged flight? Vengeance against _that_, so recent in memory? D'Albeqaas had to clamp back a convulsive shudder.

He felt sick. Sick to the stomach; sick to the soul. A blurred dullness filled the hollow left by the hateful, bloodthirsty rage and adrenaline that had welled up in him earlier.

The miners' madness and their one-sided deaths—as one-sided as the reciprocal slaughter—that had been the Archenemy's catalyst. The death, the blood, and the arbitrators' righteous hatred: all of these had been tapped by that summoning. They, the arbitrators, had _helped_ conjure those daemons.

The thought set the marshal's stomach roiling even worse. He clamped down his gut, focusing on breathing steadily. Think what the arbitrators would think if he vomited. He ought to comfort them, perhaps—but failing that, he would remain aloof. He couldn't afford to let them see weakness. Let them think him to be a pillar on which they could lean, no matter how fragile his interior. Nothing would be worse for morale than showing weakness now. 

The worst part wasn't the deaths, though. It wasn't the humiliation, or failure of duty. He had done as much as he could against the greatest horror the galaxy could throw at him: the vaunted Archenemy, the mythical Daemon. He had done all he could do: survive.

The worst part was the recognition of how outclassed he was; the awe. The daemons had been revolting and horrifying... but they had also been consummate killers. They had been predators, expert warriors, avatars of warfare. They had been skill and slaughter enfleshed. No mere man could match that. He was pathetic compared to those entities; a cringing scrap of flesh in which to sheath a blade. He was nothing, and humbled for it. How could the Imperium, mankind, face such a foe and win? To that, the simplest of answers: it couldn't.

He needed—he needed to take council from Chastener Ripula, Aquinas Base's spiritual guide. Where was he now, if not in a crisis of faith? He needed to contact Judge Kuoras and high command. He needed to alert authorities higher than himself about the Moral Threat that had erupted beneath his command—and to suffer the consequences for having allowed it to be birthed.

He shifted, shedding a dusting of human viscera, and looked out the Rhino's frontal view slot. The sun was setting on the barren vista. Soon temperatures would plummet to below freezing. Already the winds, the cold gusts from beyond the terminator that shrieked in to replace the rising heat, were rising. The bitter elements, in their stark extremes, were the greatest sculptors this planet could ask for.

The desolace so sculpted stretched out before him: an endless sea of baking sands stretching from the mountains from which they descended to the far horizon, broken by chaotic jumbles of jutting rock, haphazard pillars, and similar edifices of nature. Web-like scatterings of deep ravines were the only remnants of waterways boiled away millions of years ago. Red stone mesas and buttes rose in the distance like jagged fingers, thrown into sharp contrast by the setting sun.

The hollow emptiness of that rugged landscape touched something in D'Albeqaas, some hidden vein of pathos to match the losses of the day. He let himself get lost in the wilderness, discarding the bruised trappings of his flesh, the uncomfortable confines of his carapace armor, in favor of the oblivion of letting his eyes choose their own path.

He didn't know how long he stayed there, staring. It was entirely dark, though, by the time that the shuddering of the Rhino shook him from his reverie. Harbess had quietly died. Had D'Albeqaas fallen asleep? No, he had not. He did not think that he would be able to sleep without nightmares for some time to come, in any case.

The vox was crackling. It had been asking for him for some time, he realized. Aquinas Base had come into contact range. Had the other Rhinos voxed ahead the news? Throne, but he didn't want to have to explain to the arbitrators under his command what had occurred today. There was no way—no way at all—that they could understand what he had seen. They would think him a coward, or worse, broken. But there was no avoiding it. He had put off his responsibilities long enough. He crossed the hold and crouched beside the voxcaster, picking up the receiver.

“Coming in, Aquinas Base,” he said. “Marshal D'Albeqaas speaking.”

+Finally,+ came a gravel-voiced response—not one of the usual vox-officers, and with a curtness wholly unsuited to an arbitrator speaking to a superior officer. +About time you reported back. I'm sure that you have a great deal to report. We regret not having arrived before you departed, Marshal, and are glad that you are still alive.+

“I-” D'Albeqaas began, caught off guard by the presence of a stranger. Who could possibly be visiting this desolate equatorial Adeptus Arbites penal base? And how could they possibly know that he had been venturing into danger? “Who is this? What is your authorization level?”

+My clearance is Alpha Phi Iota, Marshal. Far above the scale of your usual interactions, I am sure—though perhaps no longer. I am Brother-Captain Samnite of the Adeptus Astartes, and I hear tell that you have something of a daemon problem.+

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## Dave T Hobbit (Dec 3, 2009)

Serpion5 said:


> ...I was under the impression that a bloodletter was physically unable to relinquish its blade....


It beleive it depends on context: I remember reading somewhere that Champions of Khorne can obtain a Bloodletter's blade by wrestling it from them, so they are not fused to it.


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## Zodd (Jul 27, 2009)

Oh yes, another story from Mr. Toes. With Marines and "ordinary people" k:


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## Mossy Toes (Jun 8, 2009)

The most interesting interaction, in my eyes. Exploring that cusp between the human and the posthuman.


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## Mossy Toes (Jun 8, 2009)

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No man, D'Albeqaas had thought in the depths of his despair, could face the daemonic. No man—and for this reason, the Imperium was lost.

These were not men.

_My God my Emperor upon His Throne who watches with a just heart_—the words that ran through D'Albeqaas's mind, cast now to the greatest heights of elation, as he stepped from the Rhino into Aquinas Base's garage and first saw the waiting marines—_Holy Lord above in gold and adamant, these are not men! They are a force to cast back that which men cannot defeat; the unclean. They are angels in unsullied flesh. They are my deliverance!_

Two and a half meters tall and encased in massive ceramite armor of gunmetal silver, the eleven figures dwarfed the men and women in the garage who prepared for the expedition force's return. The marines carried no weapons at this time, but were themselves living weapons. Their every subtle motion promised at the capacity to break bones and snap necks, restrained only by total, inhuman discipline. Their armor was glittering and pure, decorated with the votives, memorials and tributes of centuries of service. Their faces were vast and stretched, unnaturally bloated by a swelled musculature and skeleton into sharp, hard-angled caricatures of strength. They were the juxtaposition of feral strength with utter self-control. They were the Angels of Death; the Emperor's Spear.

_My God Emperor Imperator Sanctus Dei my God my God_—fluttered his heart.

“My lords,” D'Albeqaas stammered out. This was too much. To pile such overwhelming awe and hope upon the horror he had witnessed, to waver back from that abyss of despair with such speed—this was far too much. He fell to his knees and averted his gaze.

“Arise, marshal, and look me in the eye.” The speaker's voice was deep, redolent with power and self-assuredness. “I am Captain Samnite, and no lord.”

“Of course, captain,” he replied. His heart trembled as he picked himself up off the garage's floor and met the captain's gaze. Samnite was encased in armor large enough to shame that of his sacred brethren—far more massive and hulking. His helmet rested at his hip, and his face was blunt and scarred. He seemed large enough to shake the ground with every step.

“You have seen battle, and your men are the worse for it. Tell me, what have you faced?”

“Horrors, my lord. Captain. We had thought to be facing miners in revolt—and that's what we found, at first. Miners driven insane, attacking us on the surface without protective gear. Once we killed them, however... the beasts came. Daemons.”

The space marines shifted, exchanging glances and nods. Captain Samnite's intense gaze, however, never shifted from D'Albeqaas. “Describe them,” he said.

“Large. Red-skinned. Predators, all of them. They had swords, and were—fast. They rose from the blood of the fallen. They tore through my men with ease. We killed some of them—but it was all we could do to escape with our lives.”

“You have done what you could with limited means, Marshal D'Albeqaas,” Samnite said, giving a small nod. “I would expect nothing less from a man in your position. Your foes were Bloodletters; foot soldiers of the Blood God. Your miners had fallen under His influence too, explaining their madness. He cares not from whence the blood flows, but only that it does.

“You have done well enough," the captain said, and looked over the line of bedraggled, bloodstained arbitrators. You men, however, are injured and weary. See to your injuries, your equipment, and the sanctity of your souls. Such a trying experience is not without its dangers; guard yourselves and gird yourselves with faith. Do not give in to doubts and fears. The Emperor has sent us, and together we shall purge this cancer from the face of this world. Marshal—we must speak more once you have seen to the needs of your men.”

“Of course, captain,” D'Albeqaas said, giving the motion for his men to dismiss. “But I must ask—how did you know to come here? We have sent no request for aid. For you to have arrived now, well, you would have to have begun your voyage long before this outbreak.”

“The Emperor works in mysterious ways, D'Albeqaas. If you must know, we were traveling in the area when the Emperor's Tarot warned us of something greatly amiss.”

“I see, captain. Finally—if it's not too bold to ask—might I know which chapter of the legendary space marines has arrived to aid us?”

Samnite stared at D'Albeqaas long and hard before answering. Finally he sighed and passed a gauntleted hand across his eyes. “You would not have heard of us. We are known as... the Grey Knights.”

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## Dave T Hobbit (Dec 3, 2009)

A good little kick at the end


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## Zodd (Jul 27, 2009)

Things just went from bad to worse for d'Albeqaas, I think :wink:


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## Mossy Toes (Jun 8, 2009)

Oh, how could you tell! :wink:

*Edit*: I've been over the second update, the fight against the daemons, and tidied up a number of awkward phrasings and clumsy sentences. I feel it reads smoother, now.


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## Mossy Toes (Jun 8, 2009)

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D'Albeqaas, freshly washed, his bruises salved and his scratches bandaged, knelt at the chapel pew. His body ached, and he fought an overwhelming wave of fatigue. How easy it would be to slip back into that trance state he had found on the drive and to let time trickle past untracked.

No. He had a duty to the dead: to commend their souls to the Emperor. To seek silence and surcease now would not honor them.

He remembered Proctor Bowde. Not in that last moment—legless, slashed and charring, despair etched on his helmetless face as the Rhino rolled away—but as an arbitrator in the line of duty. He had been a diligent, methodical man, careful in everything that he did.

Six others of Bowde's squad had died: Venten, Chierlus, Kraest, Relio, Freyth, and Mirial. Four men and two women; excellent arbitrators all. Venten had been cruel, perhaps, but only to those who sinned against the Emperor. Relio had been hopelessly untidy, always prone to failing morning inspection, until his squadmates took silent steps to ensure his readiness. D'Albeqaas hadn't asked what those steps had been; it was his place as commanding officer to pretend to not even know about them at all.

The entirety of Squad Delta had been killed. Proctor Mesry had been a tough and capable woman, quick to a callous laugh or a knowing smirk. D'Albeqaas had always suspected her—perhaps unfairly—of committing certain indiscretions while on the duty roster. That didn't matter now. The Emperor alone could judge her where she was. Her squad had been unfailingly disciplined: Bremman, Tactylos, Morense-

“Heavy rains weigh down your thoughts, marshal,” said a voice behind him.

“My faith is a rock, chastener,” D'Albeqaas replied, alluding to the same sermon to which the speaker referred. “It cannot be washed from me so easily.” He sat back on the bench and turned.

Bast Ripula, Aquinas Base's resident chastener and preacher, snorted. “That is for me to judge, I think. But I should hope so.”

“I would have thought you'd be seeing to the other survivors,” said D'Albeqaas. “They've been through a trying experience.”

“And you have not? But you are good and right, as their commander, to insist that I see to them first—just as I am right in my role as spiritual councilor to insist that I must now see and speak to _you_. In answer: I have seen to them. Those, at least, who came to me of their own accord.”

“Not all did?” asked D'Albeqaas, troubled.

“Not all did,” replied Ripula, a note of sorrow in his voice.

“Then I presume you have already made a list of those that are remiss in their faith.”

Ripula nodded. “But it is not about them that I have come to speak with you. What weighs upon the soldier is ever all the more heavy upon the leader. You're a good man. Dutiful. A capable leader. I've heard the accounts of what occurred...”

“A debacle,” D'Albeqaas snarled, his fists clenching. “We weren't prepared.”

“No man can ever be truly prepared to face a Moral Threat. No man can be ready to challenge the Archenemy on its own terms. The Emperor merely demands that you face it nonetheless—as you have done—whether you are ready or no.”

“Proctor Zyphes dead,” said D'Albeqaas, his voice taut. “Proctor Bowde. Squad Delta. Most of Squads Alpha and Gamma. _I should have saved more_.”

“Their losses are tragic,” Ripula said. “Mourn them, avenge them—but don't blame yourself for their deaths. Fault lies purely with the Archenemy. They died doing the Emperor's work-”

“They did not!” D'Albeqaas snapped, banging his fist against the back of the pew. “It was butchery, nothing more. Had I not gone, Captain Samnite would be here all the same, and the Grey Knights would be preparing to cleanse the mine of their own accord.”

“And would you have had him find you shirking your responsibilities, hiding here at Aquinas in blind, abject ignorance?” Ripula asked, his tone turning sharp. “You had no way to know what you faced, and prosecuted your duty in the proper order of things. Captain Samnite praised you, in his way. You did all, he said, that he could have expected from you—he, the Angel.”

“I should have died before so many of my men did,” D'Albeqaas said. “Or at least—no. I know, I know. I did as well as I could—but see how much better Gaur did? He saved seventeen arbitrators from two squads. And me? Seven of thirty.”

“From the edge of the battlefield, he tells me. He spoke admiringly of how you plunged without hesitation into the heart of the foe to pluck out the survivors of Squad Gamma from their midst. He expressed a secret fear that he wouldn't have been able to make such a leap, himself. That he would have dismissed Squad Gamma for dead. He doesn't blame you. He is in awe of you. They all are, after this. You dragged them out of Hell.”

“Maybe. But... it enrages me. To have lost so many. It enrages me, Bast, and I fear that rage. It's not—focused, or righteous, reasoning hatred. It is an ocean inviting me in. A man could drown in that rage.”

Ripula reached out and took D'Albeqaas's shoulder, compassion written in his features. “Then hold fast to the Emperor. Trust Him to temper your rage with reason. That He is silent does not mean He is uncaring. Hold fast.”

“Wrong, chastener,” said a deep voice in the doorway. Ripula and D'Albeqaas turned to see Samnite silhouetted there, filling the chapel doors with his impressive bulk. “He is not silent. His voice is on the rolling air. You hear Him where the waters run. He stands inside the rising sun, and in that setting He is fair.

“The Emperor speaks, chastener. You need simply to know how to listen.”

“Most eloquent, captain,” Ripula said. “The words of a poet? And also—I am sorry, sir, but in all the stories I know of the Adeptus Astartes, I have never heard of the Grey Knights. I am sure that your piety, however, does your chapter credit.”

“It is unsurprising. One can hardly be familiar with all of the thousand chapters of the space marines. But as for the poet?” Samnite said, and a smile hinted at his lips. “You would not know him.” He turned to D'Albeqaas, his face solemn once more. “Marshal D'Albeqaas—I am glad to find you here. The Emperor protects those who arm and armor themselves with His will. I have much to ask you.”

The two of them spoke for a time. Ripula soon excused himself to see to other tasks. Samnite asked questions about the ambush: questions regarding the attack of the crazed miners, the number of bloodletters they had faced, the layout of the mine, and more. His overlarge features betrayed nothing of his thoughts on D'Albeqaas's answers. His questions were sharp and incisive, often probing areas still raw for D'Albeqaas—but the marshal answered them honestly and without hesitation.

Samnite showed a familiarity with the particulars of the situation and a comprehension of the enemy that allowed D'Albeqaas to gladly relinquish control of the conversation. Indeed, several of Samnite's observations preempted statements by D'Albeqaas, making it unnecessary to voice them aloud. His questions consistently made D'Albeqaas consider angles to the battle that he had not before.

When the interrogation ended, Samnite informed him in no uncertain terms that on the morrow, he would muster all of his arbitrators—even those that had not accompanied him before—down to and including those combat-capable arbitrators who typically remained at Aquinas, such as Chastener Ripula, and they would return to the mine. Justicar Meridosus would accompany them with his Grey Knights strike squad.

When D'Albeqaas asked where he, Samnite, would be, the Brother-Captain replied:

“So far, you have only seen ten of my brethren. I will be in orbit, ready to teleport down with the remaining four: my fellow Terminators.”

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## Boc (Mar 19, 2010)

A good update. I particularly enjoyed the way you introduced Ripula's character. His dialogue seemed very genuine, to the (in my head) pacing of his speech and especially his choice of words. You did an excellent job of making him come across as both an actual spiritual leader and as a believable (when compared to the stereotypical chastener figure) character. Good stuff, Mossy, look forward to more.


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## Mossy Toes (Jun 8, 2009)

Really? I'm glad to hear you say that--because somebody on the BL Bolthole said it sounded like they were "dictating formal letters."

And don't worry--I'm writing more now.

Edit: I've also added a phrase I wanted to work into the conversation between Ripula and d'Albeqaas to the very beginning of the story as a quote.


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## Mossy Toes (Jun 8, 2009)

+

D'Albeqaas was going to be sick. He could feel it in his gut as the Rhino rattled up the foothills. His throat and tonsils felt swollen and his breakfast churned in his stomach. He had donned his helmet early so that he didn't have to fight to keep his face impassive. As it was, he still found himself glancing out the view slit altogether too often, dreading the moment when the mine installation would come into view. It was psychosomatic, of course. Just the physical manifestation of anxiety at returning to a traumatic location. Knowing that didn't make his mouth any less dry, or his heart palpitate any slower.

At least they would be able to recover the bodies. The remaining arbitrators would be able to pay their respects to the fallen in person. Chastener Ripula would commend their souls to the Emperor. There was also, to be brutally pragmatic, the matter of the equipment lost. Aquinas base functioned on a very finite number of environ-sealed suits of carapace armor and the loss of so many, as well as so many weapons, could very well cripple the base's long-term operational capacity. This one mine was hardly the only penal emplacement under Aquinas's jurisdiction.

But... the thought of returning to that killing ground. The weight of it kept returning and sitting uneasily in his mind. Better that they were just there already, rather than this interminable waiting.

The six other survivors of Squads Alpha and Gamma accompanied him, along with Preacher Ripula, the base's resident detective, and its quartermaster. The other non-combat personnel roped into accompanying the cleansing force had been spread out among the squads.

Roughly seventy-five arbitrators were headed toward the mine, riding in six Rhinos and two closed-compartment half-tracks. In the lead was the Grey Knights Rhino that contained their strike squad.

+Marshal,+ crackled the vox, +this is Justicar Meridosus. We are approaching the mine. Ready your men and say your prayers. The Emperor protects.+

“The Emperor protects,” D'Albeqaas echoed, swallowing his unease. He flipped the vox transponder to the channel that all the vehicles were tuned into and hit the transmit stud. He had to say something uplifting and reassuring. He opened his mouth, but found no words. He was empty. Static crackled.

“Get ready for combat,” he finally said. “We're arriving.”

He released the transmit stud, cursing his stumbling tongue internally. Ripula put a hand on his shoulder, but didn't say anything.

The Rhino rattled and rumbled up the last slopes and trundled into the yard. Through the view slit it looked like nobody was waiting for them. In fact, it looked like—but that couldn't be right.

The doors opened. D'Albeqaas took a deep breath and stepped out of the transport, his bolt pistol in hand.

“This is where you fought?” Ripula asked him as he disembarked as well. The other arbitrators followed, weapons readied.

“Yes,” the marshal said, looking around at the yard in bewilderment.

There were no corpses—not of daemons, miners, or arbitrators. There were no signs of the battle that had torn this yard asunder the previous day. The gravel and the dusty red soil had swallowed the remains of the fallen, and the blood and viscera that had soaked the ground, entirely. The gravel was smooth, as if it had never been scattered and scarred by weapons-fire, a scrambling melee, and Rhino treads.

“I saw a hundred miners die here, and forty of my own men. Where-” he said stuttering, “where are they? I don't understand.”

“Do not attempt to,” said Justicar Meridosus as he approached. He wore a hatchet-faced silver helm, and carried a gleaming halberd and a combi-bolter. If the Space Marines had been intimidating before, they were far more so when bearing arms. “The Daemon is unknowable, marshal. Seeking to comprehend its reasoning, or lack thereof, and to know its methods, leads only to madness.”

“I—yes, of course,” D'Albeqaas said. He cast a last look around then shook his head, trying to drive the confusion from his mind. He had to lead his men. He had to be a good example.

“Silence,” Meridosus said abruptly. A handful of seconds drifted past. D'Albeqaas could hear only the idling engines of the Rhinos and the more distant squads of arbitrators disembarking.

Gradually, though, another sound built. Wails and howls and shrieks. The Archenemy knew they had arrived and had sent its pawns to greet them.

“We have guests,” Meridosus said. “Let us entertain them.” D'Albeqaas could hear a cruel smile in his voice.

+


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## Mossy Toes (Jun 8, 2009)

Decently happy with this update, but not thrilled. May touch it up later. Also, I've gone through the story and made 2 significant cosmetic changes throughout.

1) I have changed the main character's name from d'Albeqaas to D'Albeqaas, permanently capitalizing the "d" rather than just when I began a sentence with his name. This way, I feel, avoids unnecessary confusion better.

2) I have gone through and replaced most uses of the term "Arbites" with "arbitrator" or "arbitrators," seeing as the former is an organizational title. Just as BL has ruled that calling a Space Marine an "Astartes" makes no sense (i.e. calling them an "of the Stars," if "Adeptus Astartes" means "Adepts of the Stars"), calling an arbitrator the name of their organization as a whole makes no sense.


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## Mossy Toes (Jun 8, 2009)

+

The Grey Knights were a beauty and a terror to behold in action.

Three of them, one with an incinerator-pattern flamer, stood at the mouth of each the left and right mineshafts. The remaining four, including Justicar Meridosus, held the center with bold and blade. D'Albeqaas held his arbitrators back, seeing that at this stage they would be more of a hindrance than a help.

Not a miner made it past the Space Marines. Gouts of flame roasts them. Bolts blew ribcages apart, severed limbs from bodies and shattered skulls. Power halberds, broadswords and falchions carved flesh with ease, decapitating and disembowelling any who passed through the deadly rain of bolts and flame.

The Grey Knights' movements were so swift that D'Albeqaas could barely track them, but were also clipped, controlled and precise. They were brutally efficient, their movements just enough to utterly destroy a man—and not an iota more. They butchered the miners as easily... as easily as the daemons had shredded D'Albeqaas's men.

A hundred miners fell, and a hundred more. Their corpses choked the mouths of the mine in charred and bloody heaps. Those behind pushed out, toppling the corpses forward into a carpet for them to scramble over—and die on.

Among the slain were a scattering of black-armored figures. D'Albeqaas bit back a surge of hatred and horror whenever he saw one of those. The mixture of emotions rose in his throat like a potent, spiteful bile.

The penal miners were understood to have been of weak moral fiber—but how had any of D'Albeqaas's arbitrators fallen so low as well? He had known these men and women when they were dutiful servants of the Emperor. Try as he might, he could not bring himself to discredit them as, before this, lacking in faith or wholesomeness. They had been good arbitrators one and all. That was why they had been picked for this sacred and arduous duty—D'Albeqaas blanched to consider them mere flawed failures. He could see to much of himself reflected in those men and women.

Another miner toppled back, disemboweled. Blood and viscera sprayed in an arc. He cried out in-

_—pain—_

Pain ripping through D'Albeqaas's guts. He choked back vomit, which would be disastrous inside his rebreather-sealed helm.

_—painandwrath—_

A voice that spoke in waves or roiling emotion. It was-

_—the Beast—the Beast—the Beast—_

Pounding through the temples, overwhelming the senses-

_—awakening—stirring—_

Rage boiled through D'Albeqaas at this violation, the transgression of the Archenemy into his mind-

_—lapping up this delicious offering from the hands of its welcome, hated foe—_

But _Emperor_, the pain-

_—painandwrathandblood—_

He was stumbling, falling-

_—forthefeast—_

Falling, falling, falling-

_—fortheslaughter—_

And then the Beast was gone, for its spawn to come forth.

D'Albeqaas found himself on his hands and knees, his head spinning. His nose bled freely inside his helmet. Ripula and several of his proctors were voxing him frantically. He staggered upright and gave an inarticulate, snarling bark. The men fell silent.

He glanced around. Many of his arbitrators—those that had accompanied him before, perhaps?—had been similarly affected by that roiling pulse of emotion from beneath the earth. He felt soiled by its touch.

“Pay 'tention,” he croaked into the vox, “to th' Grey Knights.”

A howl reverberated across the yard and through the minds of the listeners—a howl of the ancient hunt, of the ritual sacrifice hounded through ancient woods. It was not a deep in timbre, or some hound's call—it transcended depth and dog for something altogether more primal. An echo of that howl had set the caveman of old cowering in his cavern. It was not a howl heard by the ears but the unconscious brain, the lizard-brain that has not evolved for a hundred thousand years.

The first dark shape plunged from the leftmost mineshaft, tackling the Grey Knight bearing an incinerator to the ground. D'Albeqaas saw claws and teeth and flashing scales—then the Space Marine standing beside it ran it through with his halberd. The blade punched through corrupted flesh and out the other side. The beast keened earspittingly, arching in pain—and was lit from below by purifying flame. The incinerator's gout wreathed its flashing frame as the third Grey Knight stationed at that mineshaft lend his sword to the fray, decapitating the daemon. It fell, a blackened, smoldering ruin. The exchange had lasted a scant three seconds.

The incinerator-bearer clambered to his feet. His helm was a shattered ruin and his breastplate had been clawed asunder. Piping beneath leaked coolants. He reached up and tore off his helm, casting it aside. D'Albeqaas hissed at the casual, stupid bravery of that act. The heat would cook him in minutes, Space Marine or no!

But that had only been the first daemon, and more followed after. There would be no pause or respite, now: the hunt was on and the pack's blood had been raised. More of the scaled, jagged flesh-hunting hounds spilled from the darkness, one or two per mineshaft.

The Grey Knights gave ground in lockstep, opening a killing ground for their combi-bolters—a killing ground that the beasts, upon clearing the heaped miner corpses, covered in a flash.

Bolts impacted against and blew craters in daemonic flesh, but to little initial avail. Blades soon clashed with claws in a series of swift flurries. The powered weapons sheared through the daemonic talons, unnatural stuff though the latter were made of, and in subsequent blows cleaved into the flesh beneath. Several beasts, however, used the mismatch of weapons to their advantage, with total disregard for their own lives—sacrificing a paw or limb in order to shove past their opponent's guard and close their jaws around ancient armor.

One hound was caught in a wall of blazing promethium and gunned down. Another slumped, impaled by a trio of halberds. One bit the arm off a Grey Knight, its teeth shearing through ceramite and and genehanced flesh. It died as the one-armed Space Marine rammed his power sword to the hilt between its eyes.

D'Albeqaas was hard-pressed to watch the frenetic, visceral combats as they played out. Less than a dozen seconds had passed since this wave of hounds had spilled from the mouths of the mine. The Grey Knights certainly held the upper hand, but he knew that this couldn't be the last horror that the Archenemy would throw at them. As Justicar Meridosus carved the final beast into chunks with his power falchions, D'Albeqaas got the confirmation of his suspicions. Still more hounds, flanked by the bipedal daemons he had faced before. Bloodletters, Samnite had aptly called them.

“Arbitrators, support!” D'Albeqaas snapped. “Fire teams, down those hostiles!” The Grey Knights had already opened fire with their combi-bolters, but the arbitrators piled the weight of their own fire on top of that.

D'Albeqaas had authorized the emptying of Aquinas Base's armory for this mission. A significant number of the arbitrators now carried boltguns, and at least one soldier per squad was using a grenade launcher.

Bloodletters and hounds died. Bolts, incinerator blasts, shotgun spray, and exploding grenades tore through the arriving daemons. Forced as the enemy was to emerge through a mere three choke points, it was punished dearly.

A cluster of bloodletters pushed out of the leftmost shaft, and the helmetless Grey Knight bathed them in flame. The survivors staggered through the flames only to be neatly dismembered by the other two Space Marines. A quartet of beasts bulled out from the central mineshaft, only for two to be torn apart by krak grenades and two to be put down by massed bolt fire.

The Imperial forces, d'Albeqaas thought, just possibly had the situation under control: they were beating this ancient evil.

How very wrong he was.

+


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## Zodd (Jul 27, 2009)

Looking forward to see, how wrong he was opcorn:


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## Mossy Toes (Jun 8, 2009)

Well, Zodd, sorry, but you'll have to wait even longer.

I'm afraid that this story is going to have to go on hiatus for a few months. I'm going to be away from the internet and computers for most of the summer, so I'll have little chance to continue this. I'll be writing in physical notebooks, to transcribe onto a computer, and will hopefully finish--or at least make significant progress on--this story. See you lot later.


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