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Da Portal of Darkness Chapta 20 | |
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Da Portal Of Darkness Chapta 20 |
The droning sound from the marines continued, and Venris Highbalt was starting to get impatient. Krixus had promised him immortality was to be his reward for serving their patron, and Highbalt was in a hurry to receive his just rewards. “Our patron draws near,” Nillotep called out “let the vessel step forwards and be made ready.” Smiling, Highbalt took a step closer to the sorcerer. “Activate the portal,” Nillotep commanded, and Krixus placed the strange device that was neither wholly machine nor living tissue against the gateway to the eldar webway. There was a sudden pulse of light in the darkness of the night as the gateway activated and the glowing sphere that formed there illuminated the area around the gateway. In a place far away and yet very close by something stirred. Its name had been called out across the boundaries of reality and summoned it to this place. It wrapped itself around one of the pathways that stretched through its home, the narrow conduits that were shielded against its kind. Sometimes it smelt souls within those conduits, but they were always beyond reach and it was enraged at being unable to devour them. The conduit had been opened to what lay beyond but the entity could not reach the portal created to the other realm and make use of it. But it could sense something else occurring also, preparations were being made to provide it with the means to manifest itself directly, and so the entity waited. “Is the vessel ready?” Nillotep asked and Highbalt was unsure if he was supposed to answer. “The vessel is ready,” Krixus answered. “Then let its death provide the way for our patron to be brought before us,” Nillotep said. “What?” Highbalt exclaimed, no one had said anything to him about his dying here, he had been promised immortality, and he turned to run. Krixus reached out an arm and caught hold of Highbalt as he attempted to escape. “You can’t do this!” Highbalt yelled as Krixus dragged him towards Nillotep, “I was promised life eternal for our patron.” “Our patron will take your body,” Krixus said, “and will dwell in
it for eternity.” “I call to our patron Kas’Shes’Tck’Aztal to take the vessel we offer,” Nillotep said and he raised his knife above his head. “No!” Highbalt called out one last time before the blade was brought down and plunged into his chest. As his life left him, Highbalt had time to reflect on what had brought him here, “My dreams of conquest,” he gasped with remorse over what he never achieved, and as he fell to the floor he was certain that he heard the sound of Rhia laughing at him. “The vessel is offered,” Nillotep said, “our patron comes.” The entity saw a disturbance in the tides of its realm near to the portal that indicated the energy of a soul passing from the other realm into this one. But instead of being cast adrift the soul remained where it was, and it torment radiated around. Only part of the soul had left the dying body, while another part remained held within it by dark magics, joining the two realms together for as long as the magic held. Here was the breach that the entity required, beyond that was a host body provided by its worshippers that would allow it to manifest itself, and the daemon Kas’Shes’Tck’Aztal moved eagerly towards it. The warband drew near to the edge of the woods when they saw the light from ahead that illuminated their target area. “Whoa dat was weird,” Drazzok said, stopping suddenly and placing a hand to his forehead, “like I just ate somethin’ well cold.” “Was it nice?” a madboy asked, and Drazzok picked up a rock and threw it at him. “Wot’s up Drazzok?” Hazug asked. “Dunno,” the weirdboy answered, “I just got dis feelin’ like somethin’ ‘appened dat aint natural.” “Well dat eldar gate thingy’s been switched on, maybe dats it.” “Maybe, but it felt like somethin’ was getting’ closer.” “I don’t see Highbalt,” the assassin said, or any of the ordinary soldiers, just the traitor astartes.” Hazug looked at the area himself, even without magnification he could make out several transport vehicles scattered about and the marines standing in a circle around the portal itself. “Sophie and Thuggrim get up ‘ere,” Hazug ordered, and the pair made their way to the front of the warband where Hazug stood beside Jarr who was lifting his rifle into position, “Right I wants ya both to stay ‘ere,” Hazug told them, “Sophie, keep a look out for dis Highbalt bloke and call out if ya see ‘im,” then he turned to Thuggrim, “and I wants ya to use dat snazzgun ya got to ‘elp pick off anyone wot looks like dey is causin’ us trouble.” Thuggrim nodded. “Dis sounds like a job for me good eye,” he said, and he reached for the pouch around his neck. “You’ve got to be kidding,” Sophie said as the madnob opened up the pouch and removed its contents, then she opened her mouth in surprise as he pulled out a small metal sphere with a glass lens attached to it. Then he lifted his eye patch to reveal a metal socket in place of his missing eye, into which he pushed the metal sphere. “It’s a bionic eye,” Sophie exclaimed. “Of course it is,” Thuggrim replied as his artificial eye powered up, “keepin’ a real eye in dat pouch would be stupid. I is mad, not stupid,” and he then lay down next to Jarr and levelled his own custom rifle towards the area around the eldar webway gate. “Right den lads,” Hazug said to the remaining greenskins, “we got Jarr and Thuggrim coverin’ us from ‘ere where dey got a good view of wot’s ‘appenin’, so we is goin’ to make our way to where da woods go around behind dat big ball of light and charge down dare from behind it and show ‘em whose best. Goddit?” “Goddit,” the orks replied in unison. “Right, den lets go,” Hazug said. As far as Rhia was concerned, Venris Highbalt had got his just deserts, and it had lifted her spirits slightly to be able to watch the treacherous old fool’s life come to an end. Of course, it didn’t really help her in the long run, she was still going to die here, but at least Highbalt had gone first. The marines had stopped their chanting now, and Rhia expected her end to come soon, she was certain that the next knife strike would not be another shallow cut but a killing blow instead. She rested the side of her head against the eldar webway gate that she was chained to and closed her eyes in anticipation. Then she opened them suddenly once more. She had just seen something move beyond the limits of the area illuminated by the active webway gate. At first she considered the possibility that it was some of Highbalt’s men returning, but the marines had had the late governor send them out of earshot to prevent them from hearing his cries for help when they turned on him so that couldn’t be it. Then she saw the movement again, and this time she made out specific shapes crossing the gap between the edge of the forest and the rim of the excavated crater in which the webway gate stood. They were orks. More than that she made out two very familiar shapes leading the warband towards her, one of them wore dull patterned clothing instead of the bright colours favoured by many orks, while the outline of the second clearly indicated the presence of a second head. Rhia realised that Hazug and Two Heads were going to save her, and she laughed again. Her outburst caused one of the traitor marines to turn towards her and he saw that she kept her head facing in a specific direction, which he too now looked in. “Contact!” the marine yelled as he brought his bolter up to fire on the approaching warband, but before he could fire he fell sideways as a neat hole was punched through one of his shoulder pads. The other marines now turned in the direction their fallen comrade had been facing also, but before they could look into the darkness beyond the gateway there was the sound of gunfire from the forest and not knowing the source of this attack, the marines took cover instead. “Dey seen us!” one of Two Heads shouted when he heard the sound of Thuggrim’s weapon firing. “Dat dey ‘ave,” Hazug added, “dis is it lads. Waaargh!” “Waaargh!” the entire warband released their war cry as one and charged headlong over the edge of the crater towards the marines around the eldar gateway. Almost immediately there was the booming sound of boltguns as the marines in the crater fired on the newly arrived threat, but having been forced to the ground by Thuggrim’s covering fire few of them were well placed to shoot at the orks, and only a single madboy went down, his body tumbling down alongside his companions as they ran down into the crater, still screaming. Sergeant Idrim was located between the orks and the glowing sphere of energy that marked the exact location of the eldar webway gate, and he leapt back to his feet as he saw the orks rushing towards him. Casting his boltgun aside, the ancient warrior instead drew both his pistol and chainsword. “For the Dark Gods!” he yelled, his voice amplified by his armour, and he ran towards the oncoming orks, his chainsword roaring into life as he activated it. Hazug saw the marine rushing towards the warband, and he stopped running and grabbed one of Two Heads’ Evil Suns. The ork was armed with the automatic weapon normally mounted on Hazug’s truck, but removed for use in this battle. “Let ‘im ‘ave it,” Hazug said to the ork, pointing at the running marine, and the ork levelled the massive gun and fired. Idrim was caught in the centre of the hail of flying bullet from the weapon, but the rounds merely deflected off his armour. Until that was one round went lower than the rest and passed through the weak point at his knee and Idrim toppled over. He kept hold of his weapons, and began to pick himself back up, but before he could get back to his feet the massive shape of Two Heads loomed over him. The ork nob pressed the muzzle of his rifle against one of the eyepieces of Idrim’s helmet. “Kop dis,” both of Two Heads said, and he pulled the trigger and sent a burst of gunfire smashing through the lens into Idrim. “Form a line!” Krixus shouted, even though the vox link in his helmet would have picked up a whisper, “Stay together. Don’t let the orks separate us.” Firing short bursts as they moved, the marines fell back away from the orks towards the vehicles parked nearby. Though meant purely for suppression, the explosive bolter rounds cut down three more of the orks of Two Heads’ mob but this did nothing to dissuade the rest from continuing towards the marines. “Yistral, the rhino,” Krixus ordered the traitor marine nearest to their armoured vehicle, and instead of halting and taking cover with the rest he continued to run towards the rhino’s open hatchway. A burst of gunfire kicking up dirt at Yistral’s feet as Thuggrim, guided by Sophie sought to prevent him from bringing the rhino into the fight. Unperturbed, Yistral continued to run and reached out for the edge of the hatchway to pull himself up inside. That was when Jarr put a bullet through his neck and he collapsed. The orks now reached the webway gate, and they split into two
groups to run around it. As Hazug ran past he saw Rhia still tied to the
structure of the gate. As he ran Drazzok felt a strange sensation building the closer he got to the marines, and his attention was drawn to a marine that wore armour different to the others. While they wore red armour, his was blue and gold, and while some of the other marines had helmets that sprouted horns in a somewhat orkish manner, his helmet instead had a tall crest protruding from it. But it wasn’t the nature of his armour that was calling out to Drazzok; it was the power that he wielded. “Dey got a weirdboy!” Drazzok shouted as Nillotep raised a hand towards the nearest ork, and Drazzok tried to push him out of the way. But he was too slow and a blast of light struck the ork squarely in his chest. Drazzok expected the unfortunate ork to be incinerate by the psychic attack since that would be the effect of one of his own strikes, but instead the ork dropped his rifle and collapsed to the ground screaming in agony as his body distorted, new appendages sprouting and thrashing about wildly as Drazzok sensed the energies of the warp flowing through his dying body. Drazzok swung his staff at what the ork had become, but the unnatural creature slid across the ground and wrapped a tentacle around the leg of another ork, dragging him to the ground. A mouth lined with vicious looking fangs opened where there had been only writhing flesh a moment earlier and the grabbed ork screamed as his leg was bitten through. Flanked by a pair of the madboys, Drazzok approached the chaos spawn once again. But this time, before he could strike at it there was the roar of gunfire as the Evil Sun with the heavy gun from Hazug’s truck opened fire at it, sustaining the burst until the ammunition belt was depleted and his tossed the gun aside. The spawn screeched as round after round tore through it, many of the wounds just closed up again, or instead sprouted new tentacles eyes and mouths, but others remained open, and what had been the ork’s internal organs but had now become unidentifiable tissue soaked with warp energy flowed out until the creature’s form collapsed in on itself and lay still. Drazzok looked to the bitten ork. It was common for orks to survive the loss of a limb, Gorrid had done it, but something in the bite had kept the ork’s wound from clotting before he bled to death, and he was now just another corpse to be looted later. Instead Drazzok turned and looked towards the chaos sorcerer. “Give us a yell,” he said to the madboys, and obligingly they all shouted out together. “Waaargh!” Drazzok lifted his staff from the ground and felt the power being generated by the madboys grow inside him. He held out his hand towards the chaos sorcerer and let go of the energy all at once. Visually little happened right away, and Drazzok was somewhat disappointed, he had wanted a big flash and a bang. Instead what he got was an invisible wall of energy that hurtled towards Nillotep as he stood behind a human transport vehicle. The blast struck the side of the vehicle and spun it around as if it were made of paper, smashing all of its windows in the process. Standing behind the vehicle, Nillotep was hurled through the air beyond the limit of the area illuminated by the webway gate. “Ya can all go deal with dem beakies in red,” Drazzok said to the madboys, “dat one is mine,” and he strode off into the darkness after Nillotep. Another ork fell to the marine’s gunfire just as the warband got within arm’s reach of the marines’ line, while their own fire had been ineffectual. Rather than attempting to draw his more compact weaponry more suited to hand to hand combat, the marine nearest Hazug swung the butt of his bolter around in an attempt to club him with it, but Hazug had been expecting that and he dodged the strike. His own close combat weapons were also either slung over his back or tucked into his belt, and Hazug instead decide to use his own rifle also. He jammed the muzzle into the mass of pipes located on the marine’s chest plate and pulled the trigger. The soft rounds slammed into the ceramite armour plate and knocked the marine backwards, but they did not penetrate the ceramite material and he was uninjured. Before the marine could either get back up or aim his weapon at Hazug, Hazug pointed his rifle at him once more. But this time he placed his hand over the secondary trigger that operated the single anti-tank missile that was mounted beneath its barrel and he snatched back on it. There was a ‘whoosh’ as the rocket ignited and flew towards the marine, from this range Hazug couldn’t miss, and the explosive round detonated as it struck the helpless marine, ripping open ceramite and flesh alike. With all of his rifle’s ammunition now expended Hazug tossed it aside and pulled the warscythe from his back. “Master lookout!” Hazug heard Ratish yell, and he stepped aside just in time to dodge the whirring blade of a chainsword before it could cut him in two. He was about to turn around to face his new opponent when the marine staggered in front of him, waving his arms about in an attempt to dislodge Ratish from his back. “Get down grot,” Hazug said, and as his servant leapt from the marine’s back Hazug activated his warscythe and plunged it straight through the marine. Outnumbering the Word Bearers, the orks were able to attack most of their opponents with two or more of their own number, forcing the marines onto the defensive and giving them little opportunity to attack without leaving themselves vulnerable to a blade in their side. One Word Bearer however, was an exception to this. Chaplain Krixus met the trio of Evil Suns who charged at him with a single swing of his crozius arcanum, the weapon that was also the symbol of his position. Even without the crackling energy field of the weapon he would have smashed the skull of the first ork he struck, but with it activated his swing continued far enough to deliver a lethal blow to a second ork also. Only the third one was lucky enough to be able to dive out of the way, his attack spoiled. But before he could get back to his feet Krixus brought his weapon don again onto the ork’s back and shattered every bone in his chest. The marines Jerile and Xerxan stood back to back, preventing the orks from getting behind them. They had dropped their boltguns and drawn their close combat weapons instead. Secure in the knowledge that they could not be outflanked they instead concentrated on blocking and parrying the attacks from their respective fronts, waiting for the orks to tire themselves out. The other marines began to try and get closer together to copy this, but Jerile and Xerxan had been lucky enough to have been next to each other when the orks reached their defensive line, and one of the other marines fell as an ork got behind him and hacked at the back of his knee with his axe. The injured marine did his best to block the attacks that then rained down on him from two orks in a last desperate attempt to escape his fate. But moments later another blow landed on the vulnerable joint beneath his helmet and ripped open his neck. Instinctively, the marine dropped his weapon and grasped his neck in a vain attempt to stem the bleeding, but this only left him even more vulnerable and two more blows finished the job of decapitating him. A madboy cheered as he held the marines severed head high above his own, moments before Krixus rammed his crozius arcanum into his face. |
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