C203: Cadia Stands
Alt Title teaser: Saving Lives and Training Hard
Date published: 3/28/2025.
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Ais takes hold of the hilt of her sword as the first chaos marine approaches her and plans to crush her directly with it's mutated foot when a line of wind flows out which knocks the marine back, yet it was not as simple as that as this first marine as well as rows more of marines and chaos insurgents fall down, their bodies split in half by the sharp wind as Ais sheathes her sword once more.
"Axel, where are we?" She repeats with a sterner tone now that she has witnessed such atrocities.
"Cadia" Ais seems to take a deep breath before asking, "then what is the plan?"
"I had originally wanted to start you off in some hive city and make your name as a low level bounty hunter and we can still do that but you probably want to save as many people as we can here. I did not have the mindset to send you at the full force of the 13th black crusade but it is what it is" The two continue to idly chat about what they should do while the armored convoy of people and soldiers watch them in awe. They had just witnessed one beautiful blond haired woman much smaller than the encroaching army swing a single time of her needle like sword to annihilate an entire group of chaos insurgents.
A small group of soldiers detach from this group as they approach, two take the lead and kneel before Axel and Ais, "we greet Saint Celestin and her escort. Praise the Emperor for sending you to delivering us from the shadow of darkness."
They speak and in the back, Axel begins to chuckle at this misunderstanding as Ais' entire appearance and battle style is the opposite of Saint Celestine. Black hair, golden thick armor, the halo behind the saintess' back, and her sword The Ardent Blade (A heavy black broadsword). All these details which Ais lacks but her appearance does radiate a type of holiness.
Axel does fall into a thought that Ais would be a good match with a minor divinity of purity that he could be shared from Passionlips but he would like both ladies opinions on the matter as Ais' current divinity is an extension of her mother, the spirit of the wind Aria. Ais is the goddess of the wind, that very power which harmonizes her with nature and shreds her enemies to chunks through her razor sharp winds.
Ais makes no move to correct their words but makes her words known, "The forces of Chaos continue to spread further, where do your current duties take you?"
"We proceed to the Elysian Fields to make a stand under Lord Castellan Creed in retaking our land from Chaos." Ais nods in response and waves her hand out, "Then I shall pray for the emperor to bless you in these dark times, I shall hold back the forces of chaos, buying you as much time as this meagre form of mine can hold before returning to 'my' sanctuary."
Her words rouse the weary spirits of these soldiers who can finally see hope at the end of the time. Sure they might have fallen under the impression that Saint Celestine can clone weaker versions of herself. Done should she be needed in multiple locations at once but Axel has no plans to intervene in this new legend.
"I do hold one request before you return, Might I have a communication device for my guide here should they need it. You may use it to inform us should you face an ambush or require aid whilst you continue your travels. Cadia Stands!"
"CADIA STANDS!!!"
Ais informs them while pointing to Axel and treating him like her mortal guide, a situation where they have no time to ponder about as they happily hand over a portable communications device to Axel. They inform him of how to operate it just in case and what frequency they will use for their group before heading off and along with the praying civilians and soldiers who have also fallen for the same initial assumption.
Axel then looks at Ais and asks her, "so what will you do?"
"The soldiers believed me to be the Saintess, this likely means that Urkanthos, the Purgator of the black legion, has already fallen by her blade. This means that the Mechanicus scholar might have already joined forces with Trazyn to manipulate the Cadian Pylons to close the incoming enemies and weaken the Eye of Terror" She says, having already been warned of their destination, she had been given plenty of research material to understand the order of events.
"I shall buy time for them to complete their work and allow more civilians to survive this dark crusade." She speaks with determination to not allow any other family to fracture like hers' has. The first step to this plan is one word, slaughter.
Rushing towards entire legions of chaos insurgents and organized armies, only for them to be shredded into chunks. Axel offers meagre help to protect her from certain psyker magicks but only anything that is beyond her means as well as taking in any corruption she accumulates from the twisted energy of the Warp.
Every step, every wave of her sword, every gesture to save the people of Cadia is a perfect reflection of Ais Wallenstein, the Sword Princess.
Like an elegant butterfly, her shimmering silver wings create the greatest effect known to man in many centuries.
Yet her actions could not always be considered perfection due to the enemies use of long range weaponry, be it Boltors, 'normal' guns or missile launchers. Then there are the melee weapons of this universe"Power weapons and chainswords.
While Ais is able to stave off the effects of psykers and weaker chaos insurgents. Her biggest enemy comes in three different forms: The greater demons of each chaos god, Nurgles unclean, Khornes Bloodthirsters, and Tzeentch's Lords of Change. Slaanesh's keepers of secrets are less of a threat since Axel helped set up her mental barrier which effectively nullified their greatest strength but they can still rain down weaker illusions and explosive spells should the need arrive. Afterall, only once certain spells reach a certain limit does Axel's barrier activate and reset everything.
The Slime Lord, Axel Gram, is not here to baby Ais Wallenstein but to help nurture her growth and assist her in reaching a level where she could have killed the final form of Gaius (the Arrancar one eye black dragon).
Axel himself had to intervene very little in this time, watching his fiance grow through her own effort is pleasing to his eyes as he stands very far from her but very much in the center of future events.
He had to send out one or two clones while he waited as his radio informed him of a certain threat which his [doppelgangers] had used their own individual psyker-styled magic to end the chaos threat before returning to his main body. For pure magick focused psykers, his physical strength is enough to rip them apart while for a few of the brutes and tankier creatures like chaos marines and daemon beasts his magic is preferred, even if they resist it, he has ways of compressing, drilling and simply mutilating them.
His greatest challenge amongst these interventions was the appearance of Uraka Az'baramael, the warfiend, and his cadre of daemon headhunters. The primary daemon had stepped through a portal opened by Khorne himself via momentary access to the Eye of Terror. The demon gives off an appearance that is a combination of a Doom Baron of Hell and a titan.
Standing at 5 meters tall, goat like horns adorned atop his scaly face that gives off a draconic impression. Thick ragged body armor that has seen much better days (ie years') fits snuggly on his body. He wields a custom power weapon, a remodeled power Axe that was morphed into a chain halberd, the chain bits wrap around the halberds blade and keep going to the bottom of the blade and around. Bit of fire and electricity revolve around the serrated blades of the halberd.
"Ah, a fine treat and skull to offer my lord. He is especially enthusiastic to meet you in person. I'll be the one who sends you to him" He grins enthusiastically with his spiked teeth as he tightly grips his chain halberd while his head hunters circle around Axel, performing a barrier around Axel and Uraka.
Axel summons a simple katana in hand as the two face off. Facing off against this demon prince of Khorne puts plenty of pressure on Axel but less so than facing any of the four chaos gods who he had already repelled before but that was mostly an environmental fluke since he just had to keep them away long enough for his journey to finish.
Axel gathers earthly essence into his blade to make it far more durable and then dark essence to counter the electricity and fire from the Power Halberd.
The two, one demon and one slime man stare down before the demon loses his patience and rushes towards Axel with an overhead swing of his halberd.
Axel side steps while bringing his blade up at the demons head but he shifts his hand and it slams into with the staff part of the halberd. He swings his brought down power weapon to swing sideways at Axel but the child just hops over the blade and slashes horizontally, leaving a deep cut across the demons nose. Axel had aimed for the eyes but the demon had tilted his head at the list moment so only his nose was sliced.
Dropping back down, the demon punches out at Axel who deflects the fist with the flat of his enhanced magical katana before delivering a deep cut into the forearm that spills crimson hot blood.
The second injury seems to spur it more than the first as its demonic energy spills out like a tidal wave and pushes Axel away. One of the headhunters moves to kick Axel back into the circle only for his leg to get cut off and then decapitated.
The other headhunters are now enthralled by the sight of blood and rush towards Axel, their own guns and swords poised to strike but before Axel can move to kill them himself. Uraka swings his halberd and with it's length, he easily slices all of them in half while Axel ducks under the blade.
The two then rush at each other, their shoulders crashing into each other before they meet in a standstill. Axel had a chance to push back if it's a simple test of strength like this if he used his strength skills like [War gods might] but with little else to do he didn't wish to dominate the fight. He was also not fully certain of what this lesser known daemon prince has up his 'sleeves'. Having memories of their details being read is different than actually seeing them in action.
If there is one thing certain is that Axel does not have to worry about any psyker ability to influence him, Khorne and his ilk are too steeped in forward brute combat. Especially this former human warlord who had fallen at the peak of his ambition before being reborn as a demon.
Minutes pass as the two exchange injuries, granted that Axel had willingly split himself where the enemy daemon prince had tried to cut him, this prevented the daemon from properly hurt Axel. He did this so as not to be corrupted by any sort of demonic energy that Khorne could use to attempt to take him over.
Most people lose their mind from reading, speaking or seeing any symbols related to the chaos gods but Axel's [Devouring] acts as a simple barrier but said man has no clue what might happen if he should be struck by someone like the daemon prince before him.
At some point in their fight, Axel notices that Ais suffered quite a deep gut wound from an enemy sword. While she has cleared her surroundings of enemies, she lacks the tools to properly heal herself. Especially since the sword was from a lesser plague demon.
Knowing he has to hurry up the fight, He summons his sword orbs. The space time vessel assaults the Daemon Prince of Slaughter, Uraka who is only able to block a few strikes before his body is covered in deep wounds that nearly sever his limbs.
"Kehehehe, impressive mortal, yet your struggles shall only grow my lords hunger for you. I shall return one day to properly purge you, await my blade when that time comes."
"Uh, no. you're dying forever, that is the price for challenging me" Axel's arm detaches and turns into black sludge that begins to coat the eviscerated body of the Demon prince. The demon struggles against his bindings but he is gradually devoured until nothing is left and the sludge merges back into Axel.
Axel soon senses something in the distance and snaps his fingers, bringing Ais back to him, the panting woman sees Axel and takes a seat, allowing herself some rest after hours which felt like days of fighting. Axel gets to work on healing her and absorbing the poison and acid in her, feeding it to Serenity to enhance her power without nurgle's influence.
"Good job on killing so many"Axel praises her but she shakes her head depreciating.
"A drop in the endless bucket"
"More people shall live thanks to your intervention" This seems to make her more relaxed as she nods,she had helped guide a few hundred if not at least 2 thousand soldiers and civilians. While she has no clue if the Astra Militarum or the real Saint Celestine would have saved these people. She can reassure herself into thinking that she did make changes.
As she rests, she can feel a pulse covering the entirety of the world, the power of psyker's suppressed and the warp weakening. Roughly an hour later, the duo can even see the eye of Terror begin to visibly shrink.
"Shouldn't we be evacuating now too? The 'Will of Eternity' should come crashing down anytime soon."
"We could, but do we want to? You said it yourself, 'Cadia stands'. On the other hand, if you could cut it right in half then you could easily Split the strongest version of a certain dragon in half about 16 times over. It's certainly more durable than that dragon too" His last line is quieter due to Ais getting up as she unsheathes her sword and holds it before herself. Having already been healed by Axel, she had been regaining her energy from the hours of fighting she went through.
Axel lifts his hand in front of his face due to his hair flopping all over while Ais begins to gather the surrounding air to enhance her power.
Her sword gains a much larger wind form enveloping it as she continues building it up, higher and higher until her sword takes on a giant chain sword design of 30ft. She is less holding it and more controlling it with her divinity now once it grew too large for her.
While she is doing this, the tower of eternity begins to come down towards Cadia. Ais quickly realizes why Axel has been staying in this spot for so long.
It's the initial area that serves as the point of contact that the blackstone fortress will make against Cadia before nearly splitting it in half. While the planet had survived this damage, the primary damage had been to the pylons which were destroyed and thus no longer suppressing the eye of terror which took over the planet and turned it into a giant Chaos home world in the Materium.
The Tower of Eternity begins to burn up as it enters Cadia's atmosphere, temperature rising until what normal metal structures would start to half melt into slurry. Yet this is an ancient alien construct far before human history. The material is unknown to the humans of Terra as they could not remake them but their own structure, the Phalanx which remains high above and continues to fire down at the Tower of Eternity is a testament to Human ingenuity.
Minutes pass by as the fractured fortress continues coming down towards the planet, The Astra Militarum has already begun evacuation under Castellan Creed's influence as well as the blessing of the Celestine.
"HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"
Before the fortress can properly come crashing down, Ais creates wings of wind that sends her flying up while she manipulates her giant wind sword personally, adding in her meagre physical power to the elemental construct before it comes in contact with the burning corner of the Tower of Eternity.
Ais has had time to properly compress the power of her sword and thus the 30 meter sword was shortened to 20ft. There is a standstill as Ais continues to be pushed back by the chaos space station. Yet at the last moment, the alien metal begins to snap and crack as her blade begins to fly right through the heaps of metal.
She splits one of the 5 corner of the station in half before fully expanding the sword from inside the station to ravage whatever she can in hopes of imploding it. Yet her power is lacking finality as the chaos energy suppresses her divinity.
Ais' face is covered in leaking blood as she has overdrawn herself to destroy so much in so little time. She needs to more on controlling her power to avoid such backlash should she lose control. Axel will be sure to guide her properly in the next few months they spend together but for now. He has something to do.
His main body brings Ais back to heal her but while she looks hopelessly at the incoming split spike that is about to land on them. Axel instead has a calm look as over 50 [doppelgangers] arrive around them, all with their own orb of compressed power.
The main body of Axel begins to gather all of these orbs and with the clones help, he expands the first orb into a sizable bubble and then like boba tea, he inserts the other orbs one by one. Unlike boba tea though, these beads of energy begin to circulate around in set circular motions and thus an inverse atomic structure has been made. Instead of the 'electrons' circulating around the protons and neutrons, the 'electrons' are on the inside while the protons and neutrons
Axel says, "lapse: Blue"
His clones say: "reversal: red"
Then everyone, including Ais speak, "Hollow Purple"
As the space station is about to make contact with the world and crush Axel, his clones and Ais, it comes in contact with 'purple'. Otherwise known as [Inverse spatial technique: Black Hole]
Then like sharks in bloody water, the black hole begins to push up, into the split circuitry of the blackstone fortress, tearing it apart, bit by bit until it completely devours the split spike that Ais had cut. The black holes size had been expanding as it continued devouring. At this point, tendrils seep out of the black hole and begin to wrap around the other 4 'points', crushing and curving them until they feed into the center mass.
The spatial star soon devours the whole fortress and continues forward but as a final 'F U' to chaos, Axel has the star explode in a burst of energy that is focused on the weakened Eye of Terror.
The black hole which was a seed of [Great Devourer] mixed with spatial energy and time bubbles to heighten the natural devouring speed to replicate a perfect blackhole where nothing can survive as it all becomes naught but a seed of energy that continuously flows into Axel.
All that compressed devouring energy is now let loose onto the Eye of Terror, a 'Great Rift' that leads to the Immaterium, the warp itself and where the 4 gods of Chaos reside.
The eye of terror remains where it is but is now has a lovely black blue coating which functions better than the Cadian gate at holding back the forces of chaos.
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Alt Title: Saving the people, Fighting a Daemon Prince, End of the thirteen Black Crusade.
Word count: 3441
Drop a comment if you wanna judge my writing or the story. I'll try to respond, especially if you're confused or anything.