Editing Story:Love Can Bloom (section)

===Chapter Twelve===
	Doing their best to support each other, Taldeer and LIIVI stumbled across the cratered landscape. It was, the Eldar acknowledged, less than ideal terrain; though many of the craters were quite deep, it would not be difficult for a scout to spot the pair. Despite the dirt and dust which had settled upon Taldeer’s armor, the white wraithbone stuck out like a titan against the charred, black-brown earth.

	“Taldeer. Are you sure that the breach in the wall is still there?”

	“We attempted to take Pavonis before. The Imperial Guard… repelled us. Not without cost,” she replied without looking back, “The structure of the city was severely damaged. It is unlikely that they have repaired the breach, even if it were identified.”

	“I shall enter first.”

	“Why?” Taldeer felt genuinely confused, and though, she hoped, the mon-keigh trusted her, his mind was sealed against any foreign power.

	“If there is a guard placed on the breach, they must not be allowed to harm-” LIIVI suddenly broke off, hissing “Down!”

	“Xenos!” came the metallic shout, “Perish in the holy name of the Emperor!”

	Taldeer’s heart skipped a beat. Had they been discovered? The Imperial Guard could be cowed; the Orks, deceived. An army of Space Marines, however, could only be fled from. Then, a new voice spoke up.

	“Yew wan’ us ta do wot, humies? Ya gotta lot of dakka comin’ to yas if yer gunna ‘tack these boyz. Go gettem, lads!”

	“Orks,” muttered Taldeer, both relieved and irritated, “And the battlefield lies in our path.”

	“Infiltrate behind them and escape?”

	LIIVI peered up over the edge of the crater in which they lay, his helmet display flickering. All signs indicated that both flanks were flooded by scouts and Orks.

	“If we went through the middle of the battlefield, they may miss us in the crossfire. We would be less fortunate in an attempt to go around.”

	“And we may be obliterated in the crossfire instead,” retorted Taldeer. She sighed, and granted, “But this may be our only hope to reach the spaceport.”

	The threads of fate twisted, ran into and out of each other, circling around and leading to the same destiny as before. Taldeer looked into that fate, and saw, in a swirling current of fog…

	An explosion rocked the ground next to her, and she snapped back to reality as a shockwave behind her pushed her into the ground, with an unnoticed snap at the back of Taldeer’s armor.

	“Taldeer!” exclaimed LIIVI, ducking down to her side. She moaned groggily, and, though lacking the vision of Eldar, LIIVI found a path through the charging Ork horde. Breathing deeply and ignoring the searing pain in his side, LIIVI lifted Taldeer in his arms. Almost stumbling with his burden, he rushed across the battlefield. Through some grace of the Emperor, LIIVI felt, the Orks failed to see him, and the Space Marines, more concerned with the oncoming mob, ignored a distant, small figure darting past the Orks.

	With the battlefield behind them, LIIVI set Taldeer down onto a small patch of dried grass.

	“Are you hurt?” inquired LIIVI, a strong note of concern entering his normally flat voice.

	“I am…” Taldeer began, but her voice was cut off as her eyes widened at the beast which stood behind him. “Ork!”

	LIIVI twisted around, pulling out his pistol, despite the pain in his side, which now felt like white fire. He raised his pistol and fired at the Ork as its shoota made contact with his shoulder. His bullet penetrated the beast’s knee, eliciting nothing but a roar of pain. As LIIVI hit the ground, he let out an audible groan, nearly losing consciousness with the pain. The Ork threw back its arm to bring down the enormous axe on LIIVI’s prone form, only for the pulsating sound of a shuriken pistol firing to coincide with shards of crystal ripping through the enormous head. The Ork’s momentum carried it backwards, landing with an enormous thud on the scarred ground.

	“You saved me,” LIIVI blankly stated, holding his throbbing side.

	“Perhaps… perhaps escape is only my secondary mission,” came the Farseer’s reply, brushing a strand of loose hair out of her eye. She smiled.
“Pavonis should be close, but if the Space Marines were here,” she murmured, looking into the distance, “They are already there.”


----


A Blood Ravens Librarian saw a glint on the battlefield, reflecting psychic lightning as it annihilated a cluster of Orks. A psychic echo emanated from it, he realized.

	“Brothers,” he called, “There is a… relic… on this battlefield. We must retrieve it. Brothers Martis, Reynold, accompany me.”

	As the nob leading the horde was killed, a bolter shot obliterating its head, the Orks fled the ruin wrought by the Blood Ravens, and retreated from the battlefield. The crystalline treasure lay near the edge of a crater, embedded in a jagged piece of Eldar wraithbone.

	“Behold, a… lost talisman of our chapter’s lost past!” he exclaimed.

	“A chapter relic? Let us thank the Emperor, brother. We shall protect you as you recover it.”

	The Librarian smiled to himself. Azariah Kyras would appreciate deeply this offering. Perhaps, even, this Eldar spirit stone would allow him to bring about the final end of those detestable Eldar. The Eldar to whom it had belonged, if not dead, would be soon, torn apart by a clash of Imperial Guard and Space Marine forces.


----


	“Low on ammo,” LIIVI muttered to himself as he reloaded his pistol. Taldeer cast a sidelong glance towards him, and was given the less than comforting reply, “We should not need much.”

	The walls on each side of the breach had collapsed inwards, leaving only a thin gap. A network of cracks extended along the length of the entire wall.

	“We can still get through, but… it was not so damaged when my forces pulled out,” Taldeer mused. An explosion in the far distance answered her question, “The mon-keigh battle over the spaceport. If we tarry long, we still shall become casualties of war.”

	“I will not allow that to happen.”

	As LIIVI ducked into the breach, Taldeer stood at the crack, listening for any sound. It was silent for one minute, but as she prepared to go in after him, she heard a whisper from the other side of the wall.

	“It is safe, Taldeer.”

Taldeer awkwardly stepped through the gap. Her wraithbone spear, affixed on her back, scraped dust from the stone above her, trickling down into her eyes. She regretfully thought back to her helmet, lost somewhere among the ruins of Kronus. The sounds of battle from the far end of the city grew more intense, a fitting reminder of the cost of war.

“A terminal, Farseer,” LIIVI informed her, stepping carefully to the computer interface. It flickered as power and data lines were disrupted and almost instantly restored.

“I… I think that the space capable craft are in the contested end of the city. To go into that battlefield would risk violating the primary objective,” LIIVI said, still examining the computer screen, “There are small shuttles here, but they cannot reach orbit.”

Taldeer looked down to the ground, trying to not reveal her crushed hopes.

“I think that I can,” LIIVI muttered, mostly to himself, manipulating the terminal controls, “Yes. Tertiary objective accomplished.”

Before Taldeer could ask what his tertiary objective was, LIIVI raised his arm, as he placed the data device he had removed from the terminal into an empty ammo pouch, and pointed to a small structure nearby, “We can procure a small transport shuttle there.”

“Then… we must go now, before the enemy reaches us here.”

The two boarded the shuttle, a disappointing hunk of metal, particularly by the standards of Taldeer, and initiated takeoff procedures. With a whine of protest from its engines, the shuttle raised into the air.

“We have cleared the spaceport, and-” LIIVI began, looking over the many unfamiliar components of the vehicle’s piloting system, only for an explosion outside to throw both Human and Eldar to the floor.


----


“Governor Alexander, we saw a fleeing shuttle, likely populated by fleeing guardsman,” the vox operator relayed.
“Did they shoot it down?”

“They… they fired a krak missile at it, likely a glancing hit. Took out the engines; if they are still alive, they won’t be when the shuttle crashes.”

The Baneblade shook slightly as its armored hull deflected an explosion. 

“Sir, Space Marine predator tank, bearing down on us. Annihilator pattern.”

“Destroy it before it can get a shot off,” Alexander commanded, just as the twin-linked lascannon emitted a beam of directed energy. A small patch of the interior hull glowed red-hot.

“Now!”

The main turret swiveled, and tore apart the tank with a single, earth-shaking blast.

“Sir, our forces in the northeast quadrant have been routed, the commissar is dead!”

“Overall status of our forces?”

“We’re… sir, we’re being torn apart by the Space Marines. Our few remaining forces report heavy anti-armor weaponry being moved in.”

“Reinforcements?”

“At this rate, sir, we’ll be consigned to the rolls of history before they get here.”

Alexander looked solemnly ahead of him, finally exclaiming, “We cannot allow this world to fall! There must be a new day, a new dawning of the Imperium on this planet.”

“We cannot win if you aren’t here to lead us, sir.”

The Governor-Militant sighed. “Issue the fall back order. This battle… is over.”

As the massive tank rolled out of the spaceport, the vox was flooded with communications. Casualty lists, delivered by the bloody and maimed survivors, requests for reports on the situation status, calls for help from abandoned guardsmen. Lukas Alexander gave no answer, and remained in brooding silence all the way back to Victory Bay. The arrogant Inquisitor, the traitor Vindicare as he stalked a wounded Eldar, bolter rounds shredding his soldiers played through his mind. He came to a conclusion, a way to show that this would not be a failure.

The Vindicare would die, and he would personally crush the head of that arrogant Farseer Taldeer.