V2 Chapter 24: Drink Deep, Sing Aloud, the Great Khan's Sons Will Remember You
Duvette swept the golden flame across the surrounding daemons, then charged toward the Greater Daemon with a savage grin.
His speed had completely surpassed the perceptual limits of every living thing on this battlefield. Space Marine superhuman reaction time and daemon senses alike could only register the golden afterimage he left behind.
Duvette understood clearly: this power lending him speed and explosive force comparable to something divine was entirely foreign to him. But right now, none of that mattered.
After the inexplicable visions and the cryptic riddles, what had built up in his chest was an enormous, suffocating frustration and an anger that could not be held down.
He felt like a chess piece pushed forcibly onto the board, driven forward by unknown forces he hadn't agreed to. He needed to vent. He had to discharge the nameless rage in his chest that was close to driving him out of his mind. The peerless Bloodthirster before him was the ideal target for that purpose.
"Come on!" Duvette roared as he ran.
The Bloodthirster responded with a roar that shattered everything in its path. Those eyes burning with hellfire locked onto the mortal charging toward it.
The enormous bloodaxe went up high, carrying a screaming tear through the air, descending at Duvette's head at a terrifying speed entirely disproportionate to its massive size.
Facing an attack capable of cleaving a heavy tank in two, Duvette did not slow.
At the critical instant when the bloodaxe was about to reach him, his footwork made a sudden crossing step. His body tilted to the right at an extremely strange, agile angle. The wide brass blade of the bloodaxe grazed the edge of his black greatcoat and crashed into the ground.
The violent impact smashed a deep crater into the blood-soaked floor. Stone shards flew outward like cannonballs. But Duvette had already used the push from the displaced air to close the distance instantly and get underneath the daemon.
He gripped the sword hilt with both hands, drove from the waist, every muscle in his body engaged, and cut the golden-flame-burning power sword hard upward in a sweeping strike.
The blade sliced through the air and cut precisely into the Bloodthirster's flesh. The golden flame contacted the daemon's body, tempered by Warp energy, and instantly detonated in an extremely intense reaction.
The divine flame burned inward along the wound. The daemon's ordinarily indestructible muscle fibres carbonised rapidly in the golden light and came apart.
The Bloodthirster let out a roar of pain. It forcibly swung its massive left arm, sweeping it across like a siege ram, trying to smash this mortal clinging to it straight into the ground.
Duvette gave a cold snort. His legs pushed hard off the daemon's leg and he completed an agile backward flip in mid-air, not only perfectly evading the sweep, but leaving another golden scorch mark on the daemon's arm that went all the way to the bone.
He landed and steadied himself. The Emperor's power continued roaring through his body, giving him a sensation of inexhaustible strength.
But his mind, cold to the extreme, was not consumed by that false sense of invincibility. His gaze moved past the daemon's massive frame to the far end of the hall.
There, an evil altar built from countless bleached skulls and congealed blood radiated a dense dark red light.
The eight-pointed star runes around the altar pulsed like breathing, continuously maintaining the Warp corruption of this area and providing the daemons with the anchoring points that kept them in the real universe.
Duvette shifted his target.
He took a deep breath, driving the golden power rampaging inside him into his right arm.
He raised the power sword burning at its extreme and aimed it at the distant altar. Then, like throwing a javelin, he hurled it forward.
The power sword became a dazzling bolt of golden light, pulling a long golden trail behind it through the air.
It penetrated the layers of daemon hordes without any obstruction and drove precisely into the centre of the skull-and-blood altar.
The explosion of gold erupted from inside the altar's structure. The pure purifying force, like a storm that brings down everything before it, instantly reduced those skulls carved with blasphemous runes to powder.
The anchor point maintaining the Warp corruption was completely destroyed. The suffocating blood-soaked pressure in the hall retreated rapidly like a tide going out.
The Khornate daemons still fighting to the death against the 112th and White Scars warriors suddenly let out extremely weak howls.
Without the sustaining energy of the Warp, their forms became unstable and their movements slowed. Some of the weaker Bloodletters simply began dissolving into the air.
The Greater Daemon's strength was correspondingly diminished.
But its fury did not decrease at all. It descended into a completely maddened state. The Bloodthirster roared, its eyes spitting materialised rage, committed to cutting down the ant that had wounded it and destroyed the altar.
It charged forward without any care for self-preservation, the bloodaxe in its hand carrying an overwhelming force, descending at Duvette's head.
Duvette had no weapon in his hands at this moment. He maintained absolute calm regardless.
He fixed his gaze on the axe screaming toward him. In the final tenth of a second before the blade was upon him, he forcibly twisted his waist and made an extremely narrow sideways dodge, barely clearing the axe blade's edge.
The windforce tore the bottom of his greatcoat. The ground at his side was cleaved into an abyss-like fissure.
In that precise moment between the daemon's spent swing and the recovery of its next blow, as it prepared to retract the bloodaxe.
A sharp, piercing sound cut through from the rear of the battlefield.
"Die, daemon!"
Accompanied by a battle cry that carried everything behind it, Joghaten Khan in the distance expended the last reserves of his strength and hurled his heavy crescent power tulwar like a siege ballista at the Greater Daemon.
With the altar's destruction, the absolute suppression radiating from the Warp had begun to lift. The Great Khan's sons finally broke free from what had been holding them back, and demonstrated the lethal killing power belonging to Space Marines once more.
The power tulwar spun at speed through the air, the blue disintegration force field cutting through it, carrying the will of Chogoris's winds, driving hard into the weakened Greater Daemon's completely unguarded broad back.
The Greater Daemon let out an anguished howl. Having lost the Warp energy sustaining its power, it could no longer endure this level of damage through physical resilience alone.
The tulwar buried deep into its torso. The daemon's massive frame stumbled forward and crashed down on one knee.
Duvette's gaze sharpened instantly. On his retina, the countdown ticked: 5 seconds remaining.
The golden light in both his eyes erupted to the extreme.
"Now."
Duvette bit down hard. Both legs exploded with terrifying force.
He did not retreat. He charged directly at the kneeling Greater Daemon.
He stepped on the daemon's thick thigh muscles and sprinted upward, then landed precisely on the hilt of the power tulwar buried in the daemon's back.
Using the tulwar hilt as a launch point, his legs exploded again. His entire body shot like a cannonball toward the top of the daemon's head.
In mid-air, he extended his left hand and seized the daemon's horn in a hard, tight grip, the horn as thick as the trunk of an ancient tree.
The Greater Daemon sensed the lethal threat above. It let out a howl of unwillingness. Those enormous hands covered in scales and barbs slapped frantically at its own head, trying to smash this mortal hanging from its horn to pulp.
Duvette's weapon arrived first.
In the instant he leapt, the power sword he had thrown at the altar, as if summoned by something, became a flash of gold in the altar's ruins and returned to his right hand.
The enormous daemon hands were half a metre from his body.
A muffled, bone-chilling sound of flesh and bone being pierced through.
Duvette gripped the hilt in a reverse grip. He used every last ounce of strength remaining and drove the power sword burning with its dazzling golden flame straight down from the centre of the daemon's skull into its head.
Time seemed to stop.
Accompanied by a roar that carried no sound yet shook the soul, the leader who had once sat supreme at the Eighth Tier of Blood froze completely where it stood. Those hands reaching for Duvette went limp and fell.
The divine golden flame, centred on the power sword, swept across the daemon's entire body in an instant.
It could not make its last struggle. Still roaring, it was consumed entirely by the absolute purifying power. Its corrupt soul was forcibly stripped and annihilated from the real universe, beyond any possibility of return.
As the daemon's massive frame dissipated piece by piece like burning ash, Duvette lost his support and landed steadily on the ash-covered ground.
"..."
He leaned on the power sword, bent over, and breathed in great, wrenching pulls.
As the countdown reached zero, the vast Emperor's power within him dissipated like a tide, vanishing without trace.
The enormous drop from that height back to mortal earth, and the muscle soreness following overloaded combat, hit him in a wave of strong dizziness.
At this moment, a cold notification appeared before his eyes.
[You have killed a Greater Daemon. Emperor's Wrath +1,000.]
Not even a compliment this time. Duvette exhaled a long, tired breath and shook his head.
Fine. Spending and earning back a thousand points in the round trip, it amounts to getting the Living Saint experience card for free, with the Emperor's riddle performance included as a bonus. Not a bad deal.
The battle was entirely over. The surviving 112th warriors around him, having confirmed there were no new threats, had already begun spontaneously clearing the battlefield, rescuing critically wounded comrades and the White Scars who had gone down.
Duvette straightened. He caught sight of the power tulwar that had fallen to the ground not far from him. Joghaten Khan's weapon.
He walked over and gripped the hilt.
The weight was extraordinary. This weapon, custom-built for a Space Marine's massive frame and inhuman strength, would be completely impossible for an ordinary mortal to lift off the ground, let alone use.
But Duvette assessed his internal state.
Although the Living Saint had ended, the Flesh Engine he had activated earlier still had a few minutes remaining on its duration.
The surging active cells and reinforced muscle fibres were still maintaining considerable physical strength within him.
He took a deep breath. His arm muscles tensed hard. He hauled the heavy power tulwar off the ground.
Duvette dragged it by the hilt, the blade scraping the floor with a harsh grinding sound, and walked directly toward Joghaten, not far away, who was down on one knee using both hands braced against the floor, fighting to push himself upright.
Hearing the heavy footsteps and the metal scraping, the proud Khan of the Brotherhood raised his head.
He saw, with evident surprise, that the mortal commissar was holding his heavy power tulwar single-handed and standing quietly before him. The commissar's other hand was extending straight toward him.
Joghaten paused. He looked at this mortal commissar, eyes already returned to their normal human colour, face slightly pale from the drain of everything just spent, and let out a genuine laugh.
This Khan had no particular regard for the gap in their respective stations. He extended that broad power-gauntleted hand and gripped Duvette's somewhat slight right hand firmly, then without any ceremony let the full weight of his enormous power-armoured frame transfer onto it.
The muscle in Duvette's face tightened instantly. His expression nearly got away from him.
A terrifying pulling force came through his wrist. He staggered and nearly went down with the weight.
"Throne, that's heavy," Duvette cursed silently.
But he bit down hard regardless, jaw set, the last reserves of Flesh Engine still in his system, and hauled the massive Space Marine to his feet.
Joghaten straightened. His enormous frame cast a shadow over Duvette immediately. He extended his hand, took the heavy power tulwar back, and fitted it into the weapon mount on his back.
He lowered his head. Those eyes carrying the storms of Chogoris studied the mortal before him without any reserve.
This man looked somewhat lean. He wasn't even wearing power armour. This ordinary mortal had, in the most desperate moment of crisis when even Space Marines had felt despair, produced something miraculous and saved everything here. Saved all of them.
"Our elders fought alongside Saint Sabbat thousands of years ago, in the ancient age."
Joghaten spoke, his voice deep and full of respect as he regarded Duvette. "That was an enormous holy war. A saint girl personally appointed by the Emperor, carrying endless wind and stars, led the Imperium's armies to conquer world after world, and finally lay down to eternal rest on the high plateau of Hagia."
Joghaten paused. His gaze sharpened as it fixed Duvette's eyes. "Are you also such a one?"
Duvette was silent.
He did not answer immediately. The visions from the void space, the words of the man standing in the burning church, were still turning in his mind.
Was he, or was he not, the so-called Living Saint? He did not know. He only knew he was a transmigrator with a strange System, an ordinary person who wanted to survive in this miserable universe.
He thought about it, then looked at the expectation in Joghaten's eyes, and gave an extremely calm nod, a deliberately ambiguous answer.
"Perhaps."
Joghaten regarded him. As a Khan of a White Scars Brotherhood, he possessed not only formidable martial capability but sharp perception.
He saw clearly the faint bewilderment hidden in the depths of the commissar's eyes as he gave his answer: the bewilderment and apprehension of the unknown that follows when someone suddenly acquires an unfamiliar and immense power. Joghaten gave a slight shake of his head, and said slowly:
"Commissar. On the boundless grasslands of Chogoris, the wind always blows from every direction. Sometimes it extends your arrow's range and helps you hunt the most cunning prey. Sometimes it raises sandstorms that try to bury you along with your horse."
He extended his broad palm and patted Duvette's shoulder, the force controlled precisely so it did not injure:
"An eagle never asks why the wind blows, nor does it fold its wings because it fears the storm. Strength, regardless of where it comes from, has no right or wrong in itself. You need only remember one thing: grip your reins and do not let go. Do not lose yourself. Do not be enslaved by the power you hold. Ride it, and become the storm itself. The Great Khan's sons respect only those warriors who control their own fate in the wild wind."
When he had finished, Joghaten reached down and unfastened from his tactical belt a small bone carving, polished extremely smooth, with Chogorian lightning-pattern engravings on it.
He tossed it across to Duvette.
"Take it. This is a token of the wind." Joghaten watched Duvette catch it, a wild grin at the corner of his mouth. "Wherever you travel from this point, the Brotherhood of the Scimitar and I will remember you all."
Duvette paused for a moment, then gave a solemn nod. He put the bone carving carefully into the inner pocket of his greatcoat, keeping it with the medal he had received before.
The clean-up work around them was drawing to a close.
In every corner of the battlefield, White Scars Apothecaries were working with precisely calibrated servo-instruments, carefully retrieving from the bodies of fallen battle-brothers the Chapter's most precious resource: gene-seed.
The accompanying Techmarines recited soft machine-spirit litanies in low voices, carefully stripping the critical components from damaged power armour.
All the wounded, whether Astra Militarum or Astartes, were being supported by comrades or carried on broad shoulders, moving in orderly fashion toward the building's exit.
The White Scars warriors showed no particular grief or silence for their fallen comrades. Perhaps, for a Chogorian hunter, this was the only ending that mattered.
Outside, the world had returned to what it was. The all-consuming crimson storm had completely stopped. The turbid air still carried the smell of smoke, but the Warp pressure that had felt so utterly without hope was entirely gone.
With their blood and lives, they had stopped a disaster that could have ended the world.
Joghaten led the remaining White Scars warriors to the gravity bikes parked before the governor's palace. They stood in the wind, quietly waiting for the Thunderhawks whose engine roar was already audible above.
Then Joghaten seemed to remember something.
He turned, reached into the saddlebag hanging from the side of his heavy gravity bike, and took out an aged leather canteen. He tossed it across to Duvette.
Duvette caught the canteen, felt the rough leather in his hand, and asked with mild puzzlement:
"What's this?"
"Drink. Pure Chogorian fermented mare's milk." Joghaten grinned, showing a flash of white teeth. "You proved your worth in the fight just now. I think you've earned the right to try this."
Duvette paused for a moment, looked at the not-particularly-refined canteen in his hands, then exhaled a long breath that carried the faint taste of blood, and something in him released.
He did not hesitate. He twisted open the stopper, tilted his head back, and drank what was inside in one long pull.
The next instant, his eyes went wide.
What he had swallowed did not feel like drink. It felt like a mouthful of burning flame.
An extremely violent, searing fire ran down his throat, like a torch burning straight through his oesophagus, reaching his stomach, and then exploding violently throughout his body.
"Cough! Cough, cough, cough!"
Duvette choked immediately, coughing repeatedly. His face flushed red in an instant. He was involuntarily screwing up his eyes and grimacing with a bared-teeth expression entirely beyond his ability to control.
The fermented mare's milk that the White Scars drink as daily fare, although perhaps not quite as lethal as the mead the Space Wolves brew, which requires a Space Marine's enhanced liver to process, is absolutely not something an ordinary mortal's digestive system can easily withstand.
The fiery sensation surging toward the crown of his skull nearly brought tears to his eyes, but he bit down, gripped the canteen, and forced through the impulse to expel everything he had just swallowed.
He wiped the corner of his mouth roughly with the back of his hand and exhaled a long, hot breath heavy with concentrated alcohol fumes.
"Good drink!" Duvette rasped out in a hoarse voice.
Seeing the commissar's performance, the White Scars warriors in the distance immediately broke into enthusiastic cheering, loud whistles, and hearty laughter.
These proud Space Marines dropped their reserve entirely. More leather canteens were pulled from saddlebags and tossed across to the exhausted 112th warriors around them.
Several enormous Thunderhawks, engines deafening, slowly broke through the cloud layer and landed on the plaza before the governor's palace. The intense airflow swept ash across the ground and set everyone's clothing snapping in the wind.
Joghaten Khan walked toward the boarding ramp with long strides. At the last moment before stepping onto it, he turned, letting the wild wind sweep across his face.
He raised his broad right arm. In the roar of the engines and the howl of the wind, he let out a war cry that penetrated the sky, directed at Duvette and every soldier of the 112th:
"Mortals! Drink deep! Sing aloud! The Great Khan's sons will remember your glory forever! For the Emperor!"