Location: Brass Citadel (Welcome mat)
Situation: Surrounded
----
Adam's eyes darted from daemon to daemon.
BUM ... BUM ..BUM.BUM BUM
His heart began to beat out of his chest as the daemons closed in like a ring of fire. The entrance to the brass citadel felt painfully close, but it may as well have been at the end of the earth.
Adam, it looks like our short journey is going to come to an abrupt end whispered Calcifer softly in his head.
Shedding his void armour, he pulsed the warp through his body. At his feet the armour came apart from the critical damaged it had taken in the crash.
'It's better to die..' Kaldor's warning resounded in his head.
Shaking his head he drew deeper than he ever had, eyes crackling with sparkling green lightning, tender nerves igniting with fresh agony as his perception dialled back into a hundred.
The warp flowed into him like a torrent, reinforcing him further, new muscle fibres grafting themselves onto his body.
I need more power thought Adam, through the all-encompassing agony, the enclosing blood thirsters now less than a hundred meters away.
'Calcifer, lend me your flame'.
It's your funeral.
From his hearts, it felt like his blood was boiling, his hearts beating so fast they sounded like a twin barreled machine gun, heat distortorting the very air around him as steam, came of his body in a cloud.
Liquid agony seemed to encompass his very being, as he boiled alive whilst his body healed at an equal rate MORRREE he could feel his very soul burning away.
'If I'm going to die ... If I'm going to burn out like a supernova, I'll take all of your fuckers with me' screamed Adam madness starting to infiltrate his mind from the extreme pain.
----
Deep in the department of mysteries, a new prophecy was recorded.
----
Crash
Thunk
Behind him.
An armoured hand hauled itself out of the train.
'You couldn't kill me that easily boy. Come back in a hundred years' said Kôrv wearily his battered form rising from the wreckage.
Jumping down beside Adam, he land with a thud graviton hammer set over his shoulder.
ᚲᚢᛖᚱᛁ ᛖᚾᛏᛖᚱ ᚲᛚᛟᛊᛖ ᚲᛟᛗᛒᚨᛏ ᛗᛟᛞᛖ said Kôrv.
The sound of a metal gerder bending
could be heard.
Out of the wreckage burst the hulking iron kin somehow looking completely undamaged, paint pristine, despite the cataclysmic crash.
It has drawn two dual volkanite disruptors which were grasped in its hands and had a miniaturized HYlas rotary cannon mounted over one shoulder, which was already beginning to spin.
'We better make a break for it lad' said Kôrv taking off toward the door. Adam followed behind picking up speed as they headed straight towards the lines of daemons between them and the entrance of the brass citadel.
Adam and Kôrv broke into a flat sprint far faster than any mortal man, Kôrv clasped in exo armour and, Adam teetering on the edge of implosion from the raging warp energies within him. The iron kin followed close behind
'Give them nothing, take .. from them everything' roared Kôrv as he engaged.
The iron kin fired, HYlas auto cannons shredding the foremost ranks.
Whilst it volkite disruptors burned demonic flesh into ash, jetting fire as they combusted on the spot turning to ash as the conflagrations chained to the demons surrounding them.
Adam and Kôrv leapt low in the final few meters before reaching the first daemons, skimming across the ground. Kôrv's graviton hammer landed like a crash of thunder sending a whole battleline careening like a cannonballs, flying high before falling broken to the ground. Whilst Adam struck like lightning, his knife flashing out, causing daemons to collapse to the ground like puppets with their strings cut from the smallest of paper cuts.
Flipping over a khornite beserker chain axe Adam landed behind it only for his back blow to glance harmlessly off space marrine power armour.
You call yourself a demon, this is a real demon screamed Calcifer spoke Calcifer from Adam's mouth, letting out a wide stream of immolating fire from his throat. The berserker's armour fell empty to its knees filled only by white ash.
'55, 56, 57' shouted Kôrv tearing through the ranks of blood thirsters like a truck, explosive graviton blasts spitting on gravity as they sent blood thirsters flying horizontally they're vectors disrupted.
Having constructed a beachhead, around the door, they made a mad dash for it. The iron kin turning as it started a fighting retreat, the swarming bloodthirsters throwing themselves at the retreating company, climbing over bodies and tearing at each other to reach them in an unrelenting tide.
Kôrv put a hand to his utility belt pulling out a geometric ball-like object before throwing it between them and the red tide.
'Get through the door' shouted Kôrv 'Grav grenade'.
All three of them stepped through the small gap in the enormous door.
The grav grenade exploded near silently releasing a blasting pulse which slammed the doors shut behind them before dragging everything towards it like a black hole.
Bloodthirsters were sucked into the air cladding the grav grenade in layers now the size of the tank before crushing the mass of demonic flesh to the size of a football and exploding seconds later like a cursed paintball grenade painting hundreds of meters red as the pressure was released violently.
----
'Where are we' huffed Adam body shaking from the pain of channelling the warp like he was.
BANG
The heavy strike of something thrown at the wall behind them sounded, the door was meters thick but already a slight dent had formed. Loud roars of a familiar greater demon coming from the distance.
Turning to the iron kin Kaldor told it to 'ᚹᛖᛚᛞ ᛁᛏ ᛊᚺᚢᛏ'.
Striding to the door it deployed a welding arm quickly drawing a bead down the seam of the door before efficiently crouching down and picking up a demon blade from the polished bronze floor, before meticulously welding it across the seam to act like a great metal door bolt.
'Let's get a move on that's not going to hold for long'.
----
Adam, Kôrv and the iron kin sprinted down the grand hall, coming to an ornate skull-studded spiral staircase with a diameter of over 30 meters, which spiralled seemingly endlessly into the heights above.
Boom CRACK
The sword broke off the door skittering hundreds of meters across the floor before coming to a rest some ten meters from their feet.
'Oh no'
The door swung open violently striking the walls of the great antechamber on either side as Skarbrand clothed in fire wings spanned wide, charged into the corridor roaring, his dual axes raised in condemnation above his head.
ᛁ ᚹᛁᛚᛚ ᚺᛟᛚᛞ ᛁᛏ ᛒᚨᚲᚲ, ᚷᛟ ᛊᚨᚢᛖ ᚦᛖ ᛒᛟᛁ spoke the iron kin gravely.
'No, ærede my brother I shall stand with you'.
The ironkin turned, to Adam and Kôrv speaking for the first time in low gothic, it's voice sounded like deep honeyed silk and demanded attention in its gravitas.
'Korv ... you have fought well, but it is now time for you to go, the kin know that sometimes for the kindred to survive one must die'.
'No brother, we can outrun it' said Kôrv I will not suffer another kin die to fall, already Ymmê and Skalfi have been cursed to never return to the forge, not another' hissed Kôrv anger and desperation bubbling in his eyes under his stubborn and steeled constitution.
The kin turned, watching as Skarbrand leapt into the air rapidly accelerating, innumerable hordes spilling in after him.
'GO'.
~ Man Of War by Sabaton ~
Tearing their eyes away regretfully Adam and Kôrv took off flinging themselves up the stairs like hell was biting at their ankles, which it kind of was.
Kôrv stopped on the final step, catching one last glance at the iron kin, 'May your hearth burn bright brother ærede. The ancestors watch in awe' he called down, before running after Adam.
'No matter how far through the stars I may roam, still I carry the fires of the Hearth in my heart' , 'not one step back' bellowed ærede like a titans claxon.
Stabilizing bolts punched out from the ironkins boots, securing ærede to the bronze floor.
'DIE'.
ærede let loose with his HYlas autocanon shredding ineumarable ranks of bloodthirsters, volkite disruptors tearing down any that made it through.
Skarbrand came crashing down now only a hundred meters away great axes crossed in front of his body blocking the vast majority of incoming fire. Skarbrand took a step forward then another, charging seconds later once more like the tip of the demonic spears horde. Rounds tore through his weaker wings but it barely seemed to push Skarbrand back.
ærede fired like a beast possessed, his HYlas cannon barrels shortening as they melted off, his volkite disruptors exploding in his hands as they disintegrated into a mass of conflagration.
This was no emotionless robot, the AI had long gained true sentience. Casting the melted remains of his weapons from his chassis, ærede reached to his back drawing two long claymore-like plasma blades which hummed loudly reverberating off the walls as their orange energy fields ignited.
So too did his legs, micro thrusters bursting alive as he released his stabilizing bolts meeting Skarbrand head-on in a blasting shockwave. Spinning off one of Skarbrand's axes ærede with limitless precision pivoted with his thrusters in the air careening off to the side as he slashed at Skarbrand's exposed neck. Skarbrand ducked losing only the tip of his horn as he turned. ærede thrusters spluttered out gravity exerting itself once again as he slammed to the floor crushing blood thirsters beneath him. Immediately ten more leapt at him. ærede in milliseconds began to spin at the waist buzzing into a circular saw, turning the bloodthirsters into mincemeat.
Skarbrand threw one of his axes, striking ærede in his chest drawing sparks as it buried itself deep launching the AI into the nearby wall, which warped from the force holding ærede's sparking form in a metal prison.
Skarbrand strode towards ærede's damaged chassis, each footstep the boom of the reapers call.
In a grating voice, Skarbrand opened his fiery maw,
'I am the spine crusher the skull taker, ... The blood quencher ... '.
'I am violence, I AM WAAAAARRR'
'I AM WRATH, I am RAGE INCARNATE'!!!!
----
Skarbrand raised his other axe as ærede replied softly.
'Im... A Bomb'
Beep Beep
Skarbrands burning eyes widened.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!
(Chapter 17 is available on patreon)
patreon.com/DescentofPotential