This is one that I have been working on for a long time. Usually it'll get shelved and then I'll stumble across it and write some more. It's the longest 'scene' I've ever written and also the first piece of writing that I ever started. I feel like I want to continue it... but for now I'll just post what I've written.
Prologue:
Colonel Fraed Nielson flinched as a harsh explosion detonated alongside the crater, showering him in mud and debris. Weapons fire roared from the widows of huts of the small jungle village, two hundred meters ahead. The village was infested with Chaos. The crude huts pulsed with an unholy aura as the Warp seeped into reality from the psyker induced storm which raged overhead. The fearsome storm had appeared not long after the invasion force made planet fall, cutting off all air support and playing havoc with the Guard’s vox network. The intelligence auguries had thought the source of the storm originated at Balneer the capitol city of this sector and had co-ordinated all available Imperial units in a strike on the city. The Chaos defences had fallen easily, almost too easily for Fraed to believe it had not been a tactical feint. Now for the last 12 days his unit had pursued them into the dense rain-jungles of the lower Kyber valley, searching for the source of the storm which seemed to follow their every step.
Warp-crazed flashes of violet lighting illuminated the village and Nielson could see its previous inhabitants, hanging from crude poles on the town green. Their skin was daubed with sickening Chaos runes and obscene symbols which danced insanely under his eye and made his head pound and ache, were carved into their flesh. Some were lying dismembered in rancid puddles of congealed blood. The Djiini, a name the filthy heretics had taken after some local spirit superstition, had massacred them, sacrificing even the women and children to their foul deities. It smacked of ritual. The poles were arrayed in a crude star and as he looked closer Fraed could see that a pit had been dug in the centre of the green and filled with a dirty, dark liquid. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what it was.
With a quick hand single his men began to return fire and the air was suddenly filled with the snap-crack of lasrifles on full auto. Troopers Eekand and Bronsor opened up with the autocannons. The huge shuddering weapons raking punishing fire towards the buildings, shattering the hastily assembled flak board defences. The fusillade from the village ceased under the barrage of lead and laser and Nielson ordered his men up over the lip of the crater, fixing bayonets and drawing blades. The nearest hut, its walls, deep purple and quivering slightly was an assault on the senses and Nielson felt his stomach churn as he realised that there were faces, twisted and burned, melded with the walls. One screamed at him as he advanced and he shot it with his rifle, bursting it and spraying purple ichor. He signalled Sargent Malorn’s squad to cleanse the taint from the front row of huts with their holy flamers. The screaming of the daemon visages reached a crescendo as long spurts of liquid fire washed the woodwork of the huts. Major Kourt took his platoon and moved west in a sweeping manoeuvre attempting to flank the Chaos cultists around the edge of the village and drive them towards the Fraed’s men. Each team let off a short volley of las and solid rounds into the building that they had targeted; their cleansing ammunition, inscribed with warding sigils and prayers to the Emperor of Mankind burned into the flesh-buildings, blasting gory holes up and down exposed walls and pulping woodslat. Nielson took his squad and moved to a large two-story building to the left. The building was a dark, wooden structure and seemed strangely untainted compare to the rest. With a quick signal, Nielson sent Troopers Bronsor and Kalyn around to the rear. The towering guardsman, outlined by a dramatic lightning strike, disappeared quickly around the corner to cover the rear entrance.
Fraed discarded his lasrifle, the charge empty and drew his bolt pistol and chainsword. The large, ancient blade roared to life as he thumbed the activation stud. From the rear of the house he could hear the metallic whir of Trooper Bronsor's heavy autocannon. Its powerful high calibre shells shredding cultists and warp spawn. With a thundering kick Trooper Drell booted the door and sent it flying off its hinges. Las shots cracked past Nielson's head from the doorway. A malformed shape of Chaos, clutching an old model Las-pistol crouched in the shadows at the end of the entrance hall. Nielson dived to the left, raking bolt rounds into the hallway and doorframe. The Chaos spawned creature bucked and writhed as two of Nielsons bolt rounds smashed into its chest, spraying its blood and innards in a foetid rain of gore. Drell stepped through the doorframe, swinging his rifle left and right and snapping off shots through the open doorways on either side of the hall. Nielson followed him quickly, cutting down a mutant that emerged from a side room and blasting another as it tried to get a bead on Drell. Suddenly the wall ahead of them exploded inwards in a white hot ball of fire. Trooper Drell vaporised instantly, his component atoms cast to the four winds by the power of the blast and Nielson was blown to the ground choking as the oxygen was quickly burned away. As the air around him blazed hotter and hotter, the walls and ceiling quickly becoming a burning inferno Nielsons head swam concussed from the force of the explosion. His skin began to sear, hot blisters forming on his hands and face. His hair and clothing caught fire and burned as a scream formed on his lips. Pictures played through Neilson's mind. His wife and child back on Tondor. The grain-mills of Thracis Plex casting long shadows across his home. Certain he was about to die the words of the Emperors Benediction formed on his lips. He was almost unconscious when he felt a huge pair of arms lift him and the cool splash of flame retardant liquid being sprayed across his body.
The White Consul Space Marine emerged through the front door of the wasted building; Nielson flung over one shoulder, bolter dealing death and raining pain to any Chaos spawn that dared challenge him. Nielson felt himself being set down, his back against something solid but he couldn't quite work out what it was. He looked around him and realized that the Marine has carried him back to the crater.
"Colonel Nielson?" The vox-projector on the Space Marines power armour crackled to life.
"F... fine." Nielson gasped at the cool air around him, feeling it in his lungs. His very soul ached from the concussion of the blast.
"Sergeant N'Coll. White Consul Tenth. The village is secure Colonel. The Chaos fiends are either retreating or rotting on the ground around us. Tower command ordered us to push through in your wake. Glad we got here in t...” A huge explosion erupted in the middle of the village. A great fireball, bright and burning intensely bloomed followed by a plume of thick, black smoke. Sergeant N'Coll slumped. White hot shrapnel had shredded the proud Marine, tearing great rends in his mighty Power Armour. N’Coll’s huge form was the only thing that kept Neilson alive.
Most of the Guardsmen had made it back to the crater before the blast and Nielson crawled up the side of it to get a better look at the village. It was gone. In its place was a blazing inferno, spewing the toxic black smoke into the atmosphere and burning everything it touched. Everything except for one thing. Nielson watched in terror as a figure emerged from the inferno. It walked through the flames, neither its clothes nor its skin harmed by the raging fires. It moved forwards slowly, its head bowed and hands raised, palms pressed together in a position of prayer. Hooded and robed, its hands were the only visible part of its form but Nielson could feel the fear emanating from it and the taint of the Warp leeched from its bones.
"EVERYBODY, OPEN FIRE!!!"
Ten White Consul Space Marines gained the crest of the crater and opened up on the approaching figure their synchronized firing patterns wreaking havoc on the landscape. Everything was torn apart by the maelstrom of heavy fire, except the man. He continued to walk forward, head down, appearing to not notice the bolter rounds tearing through his flesh. Nielson raked the man with bolts from his pistol. Each mass reactive shell landing true. The first struck his left shoulder and tore a massive gouge out of his flesh. Icy blue energy spewed from the wound, which simply closed over as if nothing had happened. The second and third shots caught the man square in the chest, punching two huge holes, which looked to be straight through him. But the figure was not deterred. He simply kept walking forward, his wounds visibly healing, until he was about 2 meters from the cowering troops. None of them could move, even if the fear hadn't seized their joints the powerful mind of the approaching daemon would have. Two Space Marines dropped to their knees, clutching at their throats as if they couldn't breathe. Another simply vanished, as if he'd never been there in the first place. The figure looked up. The hood covering its face fell away as it tilted its head to look at the remaining men. Guardsmen around Nielson screamed as blood vessels burst in their eyes and noses, filling mouths with blood and eyes with red tears as they died. The daemon, for surely it was a daemon, smiled. Its eyes glowing unearthly blue, like a Class O star in the prime of its life. Little tendrils of energy licked out of them across the creatures cheeks. Its face was handsome to look at. It was the distinguished profile of an upper hive lord, aside from the eyes. Nielson watched as the rest of the proud Marines burst into white flames, their power armour literally melting and resolving them into pools of white-hot slag and Nielson felt himself wrenched into the air. The abomination brought Nielson up to face it.
"Hear me mortal and quiver in fear. I have awakened from a sleep so long that galaxies have died and constellations disappeared since mortal’s last spoke my name and trembled." Its voice echoed inside Nielsons head. His mind slowly slipping into insanity from hearing the thing speak, its voice was incipient, each word reverberating around his head a thousand times in a trillion languages of the damned.
"Fear me mortal and wish for the quick death of your comrades. You are mine and your soul is mine forever. Learn well the name of your new master mortal, the name at which a million galaxies quake and die for I am The Warpspawn, The Bringer of The Unholy Flame and Scourge of the Veil. I am Kharnigar the Black."
That was the last thing Colonel Fraed Neilson, Brae Wasps 10th Gunners, Imperial Guard, heard as he inserted his bolt pistol into his mouth, and ended his mortal existence.
That was the last thing Colonel Fraed Neilson, Brae Wasps 10th Gunners, Imperial Guard, heard as he inserted his bolt pistol into his mouth, and ended his mortal existence.