Book 8. Chapter 89: The Hour |
Crusader Gaius felt exhausted.
Ten hours of unending combat had fried his mind and brought him to the limits of his endurance. Even with the breaks demanded by the blessed Icon, the toll had taken its price. The scenes of battle had blurred together after the first hour. Machine after machine. Occult spell after spell flashing across his helmet’s HUD, lights and power lancing in every direction like fireworks.
And the golden portals, constantly drawing him from one fight to another. An unbroken chain of event after event, until all his fights had munged into one.
All except for this moment here and now.
Stepping out of that final portal, knowing from the Icon's briefing what he would step into - and seeing it in person. He knew this was the last breath. They'd been fighting for this one moment, and by miracle and sheer perseverance, it had arrived. The final stretch.
The entire army of mankind assembled on one stage. He looked over the sea of warriors surrounding him on all sides in that gentle slope. More people than he’d ever thought was possible. Possibly two entire cities combined together, and every single one of them wielded relic armor like his own.
There had never been this many knights all in one location in history.
So many it seemed more like a field of wheat stretching all the way behind and ahead of him, curling in a crescent around a figure far below.
Pride, spite, and duty had kept him on his feet this long. The Icon at his side through it all had been the balm he'd needed. The squires in his squad had somehow made it with minimal casualties.
As the harsh unending surface wind rippled through their numbers in waves, he knew everyone here had acclimated to her revelations.
Ten hours of near-unceasing combat had driven home the cosmic joke played on the world: the goddess of machine kind had gone insane long ago. Their great enemy was a shell of her former self. Breaking apart at the seams.
Perhaps once she had been truly terrifying. But time had been a blade of its own. And now all that occupied the throne of the machine world was an insane despot that needed to be put down.
To draw her out, they would bring together an army like the olden days of war. Banners and blades. Appearing on the rim of the horizon, ready to charge down in one final battle. They may have no horses like old humanity, but their armor was just as swift.
Any strategist from the Undersider cities would have scoffed at the idea, and yet it was exactly the ploy needed to run a spear through the mad goddess herself. The Icon had predicted that the machines wouldn’t open fire on them. The goddess herself would come to fight blade in hand instead, drawn to the final fight.
All around him, Imperials of his Chapter gathered, stepping through their own portals from across the world they’d been scattered, giving each other knowing nods. Crusaders he'd trained with decades ago were standing by him again, surrounded by their own squires.
Imperial Imperators stood at the forefront of their lines, their Chapter's banners lifted high by bannermen behind them.
And far ahead, like something out of an older age, stood the single figure at the forefront of their army.
The Lord Emperor himself. Returned and fully restored. Surrounded by the greatest knights this world had ever seen.
His helmet zoomed the vision in, and he knew nearly every soldier on this massive slope was doing the same.
The Emperor of Mankind looked exactly as Gaius had first seen him through one of the Icon's portals when he’d been saved by his hand. Occult swirling at his feet like a tamed thing, the snow in the wind breaking into a sphere around him, as if the surface was a mere afterthought. His helmet remained fixed on the citadel ahead, as he spoke in quiet contemplation with the clan knights at his side.
The Icon could draw out every human on earth. Gaius knew the greatest of them were standing right there, not even a few hundred feet away. The absolute greatest warriors and soldiers humanity itself had to offer.
If he died on this field, he would die among heroes and legends.
Stillness settled over the field as soldiers shuffled in place, waiting for the call to arms. This was the last moment of peace before the end. The prelude before final, true violence. The Icon was gone now. The enemy had caught up.
Humanity won here, or they lost here.
Then her voice came over general comms, carried into every armor on the field.
His helmet pushed its zoom further ahead, past the Lord Emperor, to the citadel beyond. The gates rumbled open, and he beheld a divinity in flesh.
She was here.
A massive titan compared to all who walked behind her. Occult crackling around her frame, a raging tempest against the calm preparation that surrounded the Emperor of Man. She wore a white ballroom dress rather than anything fit for war, a ring of metal floating above her head, lit with violet holograms forming the rest of the crown. She stretched her hands wide, smiling. As if walking into a parade.
Around him, the squires and Crusaders muttered prayers and curses in equal measure, watching the true enemy of all humanity.
The blessed Icon had been right all along. He'd known it rationally, but now it struck him fully: none of their efforts had been a threat to her. It had been her entertainment.
The violet goddess was mad. Truly, horribly, mad.
The machines were hostage to her whims as much as the world was. Cutting her down here would be setting more than humanity free.
She had not come alone either.
Hundreds of marble-faced warriors flanked her, walking in lockstep behind her in perfect rows. Carrying her colors proudly. A true parade of violet, black and white colors, banners held by every ten soldiers, on both sides of the grand formation.
Feathers. Every single one.
He felt a chill at the sight of them.
A single Feather had nearly killed him and his entire squad. He remembered that battle clearly, even through the blur of a hundred others.
Only a clan knight sent by the Icon, one who specialized in defeating their kind, had appeared at the last moment to save them. That had been a battle between demigods, moving at speeds no human should be capable of, against a foe that defied even that.
And there were thousands of them, marching behind the mad goddess like common footsoldiers. Several entire regiments, neatly lined in massive rectangles, all walking to the beat of a drum that echoed even through their armors, all this distance.
All across the walls, machines crawled down the black metal and reached the ice below, swarming outward behind the parade. Like a dark sea following their mad mistress.
The army of mankind outnumbered the Feather army a hundred to one. And they were outnumbered by the true machine army in the same proportion.
It was a procession of horrors unlike anything he'd seen. Monsters, twisted metal, and burning hatred - each more terrifying than the last. Skulls and bone lit with violet light, menace behind every eye. Some towered over the others; more skittered beneath them. The white world seemed swallowed by their darkness.
Hundreds of thousands moved forward, flowing behind the parade at the center.
The goddess came to a stop, grinning wide, and stretched her hands out.
"My beloved mankind, standing so proud, so determined. Look at you all - every last ember of hope burning together in one final, futile pyre. The tribute of your souls reaped will be a fitting sacrifice to my name. The end of all mankind begins with its most loyal defenders. This moment... will be your final hour."
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A pulse of occult manifested a blade larger than an airspeeder, conjured into one hand. Even at this distance, Gaius could sense the scale of it. The Feathers behind her appeared tiny in comparison.
She slowly lifted that grand blade up, and pointed the tip directly at the gathered army ahead of her. "Hear me, mankind, and despair. You know me by many names. But the last name you shall know me as, will be Death."
A pulse of occult ripped from her frame, churning snow and air like an explosion, advancing on them all.
The Lord Emperor remained standing, watching it come.
The pulse hit their lines and washed through them all. Soldiers balked, banners flinched. And then the pulse rolled past Gaius, and for the second time in this war he knew true fear.
He could feel his very soul being shaken. This was a divinity. A mad one, but by her whims, he was nothing more than a candle against the sun.
Wind rippled after the pulse, snow and ice sliding under their boots in streams, as if fleeing from the goddess standing upon the world.
"Steady!" Gaius called out to his squires as they braced against the wind and power rippling through their numbers. "The final Emperor is with us - steady!"
Like all around him, he rose back up from his brace. Shaken, but unbowed. There was nowhere to run to, no reason to fear what comes next.
They had all expected to die in this final war. He had long ago grappled with his mortality and made peace with it. But the power flowing from the machine goddess put it into new perspective. Their charge was doomed by any measure. None of them could match this.
That was fine. So long as mankind won and put her down, his life was worth the sacrifice.
He looked up and caught sight of the final Emperor far below them. Blade drawn. The occult wave had crashed into him and broken against his gaze. He remained completely unaffected.
He lifted his ancient blade and swept it before him. A torrent of power flared out like a small blue sun standing on the world, pulsing across their entire army and beyond.
Gaius felt power as the wave washed over him. Different from the mad goddess. Filled with something beyond sheer force and madness.
He felt resilience. Tenacity. Resolve.
The occult pulse brushed against all of them, and the depth of it overshadowed what they had felt earlier. Perhaps it was distance. Perhaps it was fate. Regardless, what Gaius knew was this: humanity had a monster of its own on their side.
Victory felt within reach again. All around him, knights rose back up from their knees, emboldened. Cheers ran out, primal, screaming. The banners lifted high once more, and the roar of the army shook the air.
The goddess was powerful. But so too was their Emperor.
Relinquished paused as the pulse reached her. It washed past, and a few of her Feathers flinched against it. She noticed, eyes flickering to the side. Her left hand calmly raised up in response.
Every Feather that had flinched collapsed like puppets with cut strings. And they did not get back up. The message was clear: Weakness had no place under her rule.
Her eyes lifted to the Emperor. "My, my. It seems you believe you can stand against me?"
"I have come to do more than stand against you." The Emperor's voice carried across the open comms. "By my army, yours will fall. By my blade, you will follow. Mankind will prevail and all you hold will be dust and ash before the next sunrise. This, I vow to all who hear my words. Today is the end of your reign."
Another pulse of occult came from the Lord Emperor, and Gaius was knocked outright onto the ground. He rose laughing, along with the rest of the army, joining the rising cheer with reckless abandon.
How could they have thought they could lose? The lost Emperor of man was exactly as legend had whispered. Far, far more than he would have even dreamed of.
Everything Gaius believed in stood a few hundred feet away, and he could feel the power radiating. The emperor would lead them to victory.
Their Emperor would put down this monster. And acting as his blade, they would rip through what remained of her cursed empire after.
Hope flared in his spirit.
Relinquished tilted her head, as if pondering the situation. Then, with almost a lazy, casual motion, lifted her massive blade once more until the tip pointed at them all. “Your last words have been heard. So be it. My children, go forth. Exterminate the humans. Leave not a single one alive. I command it.”
The machine army surged behind her, howling. The Feathers charged forward, breaking their tight formation until they were a scattered swarm of white and violet sprinting and flying straight for them, with the mass roiling wave of black metal and ice racing behind them.
The Emperor lifted his blade high, then drove it forward.
He didn’t need to say the word. Gaius and everyone in the army instantly followed the unspoken order, charging forward, even against the tide of death that raced straight for them all a mile ahead downwards. Occult blades all lit up, shields charged, banners flying behind them as the snow and ice was crushed under their charge.
The Emperor stared at Relinquished as knights wove past him. And the enemy goddess seemed to almost nod at him. As if they had agreed something in private between them both.
That their battle would be between them.
It was once said in imperial legends that when divinity fought against one another, even the world itself trembled.
Gaius would witness the truth of that himself.
To’Wrathh angled her thrusters, vectoring to match the once more changed trajectory. The station was now in visible sight far behind her in orbit, a small sphere of power in the black void.
Even this far, the occult was thick and with Tenisent’s sight, she could behold just how layered it was within the ancient structure. Power flowed around the shield, and tapered downwards as if pulled to the world. Tenisent suspected either the gravity of the world was pulling the occult down, or more likely, the station was using some kind of tether to remain locked to the world, letting it move at speeds that would have launched it off into deep space.
To’Wrathh herself had to keep her wings and jets aligned against the pull in order to remain on target.
But she weighed far less, and her vector thrusts could keep her in orbit. The lack of air several hundred miles above the world made her trajectory easy to maintain.
What was unknown to them both was something far more primal:
“Why has it not opened fire on our position yet?” To’Wrathh pondered, sending the message to her only passenger. “It must know we are here. It has detected and engaged other Feathers at far more distant ranges.”
I do not know. Perhaps it is waiting for you to come close enough.
Tenisent could see Death in his occult sight. If the station targeted them with a weapon that would eradicate them flat out, he would see it several seconds ahead. The concept of it was fine tuned.
The only weakness would be a weapon aimed to deorbit them instead, letting them crash back down onto the world below. That could take minutes of freefall. It would not be death, and so he wouldn’t see it coming until the final impact grew inevitable.
That weakness hadn’t yet happened either. The station had simply ignored them as they slowly approached its orbital path.
This had been anticipated to be the most difficult leg of their journey, to survive the fury of an ancient station. Instead, it remained somber and silent in the darkness of space, occasionally opening fire upon distant targets.
But not a single gun turret had turned to track her down.
They were far ahead of it right now, and by the time it caught up to them, they would be just about equalizing speed with it. To’Wrathh calculated there would be a total of twelve minutes in which their speed would be mostly equal, and all she would be doing was finalizing the approach.
It should have been a window of only thirty seconds had everything been perfectly calculated, but the station was constantly changing its own speed, direction and heading as it dodged and weaved out of the way from larger projectiles that had no guidance systems.
Far ahead of the pair, a set of missiles exploded, appearing like small glimmers of light. She detected the turrets on the fortress had turned in that direction, but the firepower had been invisible to any other sensor.
It was as if the station was showing them they were well in range of its ire.
Except, the station would not be attempting to send a warning to them. This was war. What use was it in warning a machine that had been ordered to attack regardless? It should have opened fire on them immediately.
One more Feather in the far distance attempted to bar their path, her trajectory anticipated to intercept with To’Wrathh’s in ten minutes.
One of the turrets on the fortress silently turned in the enemy direction.
A beam of some kind similar to To’Sefit’s own cannons lanced out like a spear. It sliced easily through the upper atmosphere, where air hardly interrupted its path.
And it struck down the Feather with fury.
All To’Wrathh could sense ahead after the blast was melted metal now falling back down, burning through as it returned into the lower atmosphere.
Either the station had calculated the golden shield on To’Wrathh’s arm would protect her from that weapon, or something else was afoot.
She wasn’t certain.
We are arriving within the docking window. Prepare yourself. Tenisent whispered, keeping her attention on the station floating silently behind them. Catching up, but equally slowing down as their own relative speed fully matched it.
It was a thing of power. A massive structure miles wide. Dark brutalistic metal built all around it, with almost soft looking plates of fabric woven on each metal panel. Crafted to absorb interstellar dust and other smaller debris that would be too tiny to be spotted otherwise. Below, it tapered into one single cannon, surrounded by green and gold power cells of massive scale. Constantly generating energy from the void, stockpiling it up eternally.
So much of it looked burned away, so many small rips and tears all across the fortress. And yet it remained undisturbed otherwise.
Weapon turrets slowly moved over it, scanning the orbit. Spotting things in the distance. She saw it fire twenty nine times in the next five minutes as she slowly approached it. None of the shots had been in her direction.
The station continued to ignore the presence of a full Feather floating towards it, not even a few miles off now. She still made sure To’Orda’s shield was powered and aimed at the fortress, expecting it to suddenly turn and bite her in half.
Like an ambush predator, clearly aware prey was drifting nearby, acting as passively as it could to lull her into a sense of safety.
To’Wrathh’s sensor sweep was close enough she spotted a few docking points. Eight in total. One of which was currently occupied with the upper stage of a docked crew compartment.
Talen’s crew. Tenisent spoke.
The ones that had departed from the surface seven hundred years prior, in secret, led by Talen. Bringing with them Urs’s plates and preparations. They’d never planned to return back. Their remains were likely still within the station even now.
She began to approach the docking tunnel under the crew capsule. Small vectored thrusts keeping her on track. She still had four power cells left to burn through, enough fuel for almost an hour of full burn. Power would not be an issue.
Slowly. Carefully. Her speed was nearly equalized at this point. It felt as if she was sliding to the landing pad.
The station finally reacted to her presence. The docking tunnel lit to life, extending outwards as if anticipating a ship should be approaching. The doorway even lit green.
And then silently opened up in the darkness of space, as if inviting them in.