Two chapters were released today, make sure you go and read the other one first.
Content Warning:
Graphic descriptions of nudity, ritualistic sacrifice
“To see the world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.”
-Willem Black, The Augury of Innocents, M2
| 4 Days After The Battle Of Vrantanius |
M31.005 10:23/Volk, The Volk System/The Rubric Heart, The Helforge Mountains
The ceramite of his armour is riddled with cracks and bullet holes; the servos beneath the ceramite are born naked to the world as small fires glow under the plating of his armour in the cold, icy night. There's half of a force-sword buried in his chest, still glowing – and burning – as the stump where his right arm was is bleeding, refusing to either freeze or coagulate. The combat knife in his hand drips with the blood of the Thousand Sons beneath him.
A hundred and fifty years in ice did not deter his abilities in the slightest.
He's not sure why he's here, or why the Thousand Sons thought to shoot at him – they were all seven of them Space Marines, after all, – and he's not sure why only one of the seven Thousand Sons bled when they were shot and stabbed.
He reflects; the good thing to do would be to give these Sons of Prospero a funeral, but he doesn't know Prosperan death rites. So he'll give them a Fenrisian burial, but It's awfully windy and awfully cold, and only has one hand to dig through solid stone with.
Who is he kidding, he's probably going to die before he gets the chance to give the Thousand Sons their rites.
The luminators above him are dark, and the massive blast doors to the cold outside are wide open, but cold never bothered a Space Marine. Especially not a Space Wolf. He sees a Rhino, and he walks to it, it'll have a vox unit inside that he can give an SOS to the local Auxiliaries.
He'll have to drive it out into the open to get the signal out at all, and that'll be hard with only one arm, but he'll have to do it.
The force-sword buried in his chest finally disengages and he pulls it free, blood squirting out of the wound. His right arm finally freezes – or clots, he can't tell in the cold – And he thanks whatever spirits of the ice and snow and healing there are to thank here on Volk.
He squeezes into the driver's hatch and initiates the driving protocols, urging the machine spirit into life. On cue, the tracks begin to move treading ice and snow as he moves out into the open.
The terrain here is mountainous, and so he can only go so far before a cliff threatens him with plummeting to the ground. He stops and says a quick prayer to the spirit of the Rhino's vox unit, and hits the rune for SOS.
He then initiates his Suspended Animation Membrane and goes inert.
* * *
M31.005 06 10:55/Volk, The Volk System/The Skies Above the Helforge Mountains
Lyda breathes smoothly in and out, sitting in the comfortable seat of her Primaris-Lightning Strike Fighter. Her wingmates are somewhere in Vrantanius. Dead. She's an ace now, but so many who flew above Vrantanius are.
She's been ordered to investigate an SOS signal over the vox, command says it's reading as an Astartes signal, but no one believes it. There are no Space Marines on Volk. She's scanning the ground with her craft's auguries, but the mountains make it hard to receive anything legible back. The SOS signal's echoed off to mountains enough not to give an exact location, so she's got to search a seven square kilometre area for whatever the fuck is sending the signal if she can even find it.
If she can't find it though, she gets to go back to base and fall asleep, and so she secretly hopes that she won't be able to find anythi–
A light on her HUD is blinking and a metallic voice screeches into her ear, "Missle Warning! Missle Warning! Missle Warning! Missle–" She gets the point. The missile's approaching her from her 12 o'clock, straight ahead.
She mutters a swear-filled prayer under her breath, makes evasive maneuvers, and shoots out chaff and flares.
It's not enough, the missile is resolute, hounding her relentlessly.
The light is flashing even faster, and a moment before she thinks she's about to lose the missile, the screeching voice warns her, "Brace!"
The entire fighter shakes, and Lyda's helmet crashes against the back of the metal pilot's seat. Even more lights are flashing in her cockpit, she looks out her cockpit window to see her left wing on fire, and her right wing torn in half, the screeching voice urges her, "Eject! Eject! Eject!"
She decides that it might have a point, and eject lever, hoping the aircraft's black box will be found eventually, unlike the signal she had been sent here to locate.
The G-forces of her ejection seat cause her to black out for a moment, but when she gets her faculties back, she's thankful for her fully pressurized and temperature-controlled flight suit as she slowly descends to the ground in the whipping wind and snow.
She finally touches down in a small valley, and immediately unbuckles the strap keeping her attached to the chair. She quickly tips the seat over to get to the survival kit on the underside. She takes inventory and notes that she's got everything her training told her would be there if she ever had to eject; A radio transponder – to call for help, – four days' worth of rations – not the best, but better than starving to death, – a small fire making kit – only useful if she could find fuel for it in this desolate mountain wasteland, – a heavy auto-revolver – should some large fauna find her ripe for eating, – and a lascarbine – in the event she lands in hostile territory, she might need to defend herself.
She immediately begins making notes about the surrounding terrain, the valley she's in is small, but there's something resembling a path up one of the craggy cliffsides, – which she might want to climb to make sure search and rescue can find her easier than the odd Astartes signal she was sent out to locate.
The valley is also covered in odd occasional mounds which-
Wait.
Lyda's childhood on the cold side taught her very well what an STC hab-bunker complex buried under four feet of snow looks like, and it looks like that odd set of mounds. She walks over to it and starts digging where she assumes the entrance will be.
Eventually, she's proven right and finds a door. She sees lights through the small frosted plas-glass panel in the center of the door. She starts knocking, hoping to alert anyone inside to her presence.
When the door opens, there's a man in strange sapphire blue robes, wearing a silver mask which looks like the head of a strange bird. Underneath her flight helmet, Lyda's nose begins bleeding. She tries to look around the room and sees strange runes and diagrams, a pain like an iron nail through her forehead forcing her to look away.
A figure in scarlet red robes and wearing a brass mask depicting an ugly, twisted, gleeful grin with great horns approaches and picks her up. Another figure – much larger than the other two, in putrid green robes and a corroded copper mask that depicts a bubonic and pudgy face with stubby little horns – ties Lyda's hands behind her back as she's carried over the shoulder of the muscular man robed in red.
While still disoriented, she's placed in the middle of the large chamber and her flight helmet is removed, a warm, soft hand grabs her jaw and ever so slowly tilts her head up towards a figure clad in tight pink-purple robes, which fail to cover anything of significance, forcing Lyda's eyes to trace past a pair of slightly damp lips attached to a smooth, seemingly sculpted pelvis –too beautiful to have been made by anything but the hands of an artist, – and across a soft, slightly pudgy, alluring tummy – again, so beautiful as to only have been shaped with the finest precision, –then to a pair of voluptuous breasts like plale orbs, either topped with pale-pink nipples.
Finally, her vision stops on a golden mask depicting a beautifully androgynous face, with wicked sharp teeth arranged in a wide smile. The figure in the purple robe wears the hood of their robe back, reavealing long blonde hair like golden waves.
The figure in the purple robe lets go of Lyda's jaw and steps away. Lyda, enraptured by the beautiful figure, tries to stand but is kept in place by another figure, this one robed in black and wearing a simple iron mask. Were Lyda paying more attention, she might have noticed the other thirty or so people in the room dressed similarly to the figure in the iron mask.
The figure clad in purple is handed a beautiful and ornate dagger atop a pillow by another of the men in the black robes, as she nears the wall farthest to the door. There, is a large iron circle – perhaps 2 meters in diameter – adorned with eight iron spikes to give the appearance of a halo, or perhaps that of a crown.
A man– no, a Space Marine – is tied to the iron crown in the manner of a crucifixion. He's nude, he wears a short shock of ginger hair on his head, and more hair than a wolf on his chest, in his mouth, which hangs open, are a set of brilliant, pearl-white canine-like fangs.
And he seems to be unconscious as the purple-robed figure drags the ceremonial dagger down his chest, parting his torso. A red tide spills forth.
The congregation laughs, and for a moment, a giggle forms in Lyda's throat. So there was a Space Marine on Volk after all.
