ABSOLUTION
One of the last scions of a dying chapter, trapped far from the light of Holy Terra, Battle Brother Dacius must escape from his crippled ship…
Image by DeviantArt user ThePerfectG
I will not die here.
My blood runs hot, but my mind is cold.
The collapsing cruiser is loud, but inside the battleplate all is quiet.
The vile Shedim, who claw their way into reality, are all rage and spite, but I am calm.
No fear, never that, for that had been excised by the knives and ampules of the sacristans when I was but a boy, and has replaced by the Emperor’s Holy Light and His Blessed Purpose.
“I will not die here”.
Repeated Brother Dacius to himself inside his helmet, feeling the tang of the spittle and a slight bump as he rounded a corner into another eldritch horror, all limbs and teeth.
He didn’t even break stride.
Hadn’t the Great Angel, all those thousands of years ago, blessed each and every one of his sons with a stunning balletic grace?
Dacius pivoted on his heel, brought his combat knife around tore a welt of ruinous ichor from the abomination that’d just tried to manifest itself on the spinal thoroughfare of the strike cruiser Radiant Duty.
The thing lashed out with a spindly limb but he simply dropped to one knee and fired one of his last remaining bolts into the horror’s left eye as his chipped yellow harness scuffed along the floor.
The mass reactive going off inside the things head blew chunks of filth all over the hallway but Dacius wasn’t there to see it, he was caught up in the dance and was already moving.
I will not die here.
That simple imperative ran through his mind, over and over, quiet and cold, like a mantra, covering the nightmare black scuttle of rage at his situation.
Even before the storm hit they had been alone.
The venerable Sergeant Tomek, whose armour was such a constellation of battlescar, rust and entrenched gore, so that the scared yellow plate was barely visible, had led them further and further away from what little light remained in Imperium Nihilus.
They were the light, Tomek had said, they were to bring it into the dark places, and bring it they had. Dacius, and the remaining two brothers of Squad Tomek, were that light.
Like a line of raindrops on a blade of grass, Dacius could remember every single encounter; from carving up the heaving, spewing masses of Hive Fleet Kraken, to tracking and slaughtering Drukhari raiders preying on farmsteadders to here, on a collapsing ship right at the very edge of what was known.
Another neverborn manifested itself right in front of him as he ran, as he was commanded to run by old Tomek when the warp storm had hit the Duty.
The new thing was big, strong, barrel-chested with pincers for arms and an apoplectic rictus for a face.
Dacius felt the anger tug, he let his teeth lengthen and then he was back, in full control and bringing his right leg around in a perfect scythe of a turning kick, powered by a full tonne of Marine and Gravis plate.
The daemon didn’t stand a chance.
Dacius hit it like a falling star and the thing splashed of his greave and hit the wall in a wet lump.
He was past it then, into the chamber with the saviour pods, cramming his bulk into one, keying the activation sequence and watching the pod door slide shut just as the ship came apart in fire and in blood.
“By the blood of the Great Angel” he whispered to himself as the pod shucked itself out into the void,
“I will not die here.”