Editing Brotherhood (Story) (section)

==Chapter 2 (Theodus)==

	As I got to the precipice of the stairs, a grizzly image played in my mind. The visage of the Ork Warboss I had briefly seen and heard flashed before me, its claw bloody in Captain Daessios’s entrails. I saw the image of the man who had torn my life away beaten low and to the brink of death by the enemy. It was a worthy death, one filled with valour. He deserved such a demise, one that would send him away in the surety that he passed in service to the Emperor. It was better than the death he had constructed for me.

	These thoughts were more heresy. I could not allow my mind to be so clouded whilst on the field of battle. I shook my head, raised my shield on high, and charged into the room. Unlike the martyr my mind had pictured, the scene before me was one where my Captain was winning. He had the Warboss on the defensive, using his skill with a power sword to keep the massive creature at bay. Its claw, while powerful, was poor at deflecting the many blows Captain Daessios was delivering. If I joined the fight, the contest would be over before it truly began. It was that fact that made me stop.

	Images kept playing in my head, over and over; beating me like a sledgehammer. While I knew it was my duty to obey my superior, my emotions held other ideas. Darker thoughts brewed in my head. Scenes like the one I had first imagined, all in gruesome detail, came upon me, each one more harrowing than the last. I didn’t want to admit it, but the more repugnant the death, the more joy I felt. Why should this man hold the chisel of my supposed tombstone, and not the other way around? The question boggled my mind for too long.

	While I stood paralyzed deliberating, Captain Daessios landed the final blow. The massive Ork tripped under its own bulk, allowing my Captain to plunge his blade into the creature’s neck. It made an unholy sound as gobbits of its flesh and life’s blood spattered in random directions. It sputtered, jutting a few times before it finally lay still, unable to speak as its mouth filled with liquid. Daessios twisted his blade to ensure the kill was sound, and then removed the blade.

	He stepped away from the corpse, and looked at me, staring coldly as commanded, “We are victorious this day. Bring Burns into this room if he is still able to move, the Xenos is not truly dead until it is purged in the Holy Fire of the Emperor.”

	I stood motionless for perhaps a moment too long. If my Captain knew of the treacherous thoughts held within my mind, he did not show it. I nodded, and returned to the hallway where Anaiel stood tending to H’aman. When I came upon their presence, Anaiel turned to me with a grim expression. For a moment I feared the worst, but H’aman quickly dashed away those fears, sputtering garbled noises as his still body stirred. I knelt down beside the pair, inspecting H’aman’s injuries more thoroughly.

	“I do not know what the Salamanders do to have such a resistance to flame, but H’aman is relatively unscathed. His burns, once properly treated, should be no threat to his life,” Anaiel explained, “The worst of it is that he is still conscious, though perhaps he views that as some sort of blessing.”

	“He is our Brother, I am glad he lives,” I exclaimed, truthful in that statement. While I held skepticism over H’aman’s patron Space Marine Chapter, we had fought beside each other as equals today.

	Anaiel paused for a moment before asking, “Just as our Captain is?”

	My head veered towards Anaiel as shock played on my face under the mask of my helmet. Anaiel’s hooded visage was stoic and masked, but I could tell he held a pained expression as he continued, “I can read your mind, Brother. We will speak of it later, how fares the Captain?”

	“We are victorious,” I breathed, allowing the subject of my mental treachery to rest, “The alien lies dead. Soon his army shall rout. If all goes well, we should be back the Watchtower in a week’s time. There will be no siege.”

	“Emperor be praised, our work here is nearly done,” Anaiel raised his head, a wide and weary smile spread across his face. It was contagious, for I found myself mirroring the expression.

	“Captain Daessios wants to burn the carcass. You know the larger green-skins are, he could be playing dead,” I continued, remembering my purpose here.

	“H’aman is in no condition to move without a gurney. Take his weapon, I will stand here and keep watch over him,” Anaiel offered, standing from his position.

	I took up H’aman’s weapon, and stood as well. I nodded to Anaiel, and moved back up the stairs to where Captain Daessios stood. He was examining the room at large, one which the Orks had turned from perhaps a lobby to a munitions storage. One of the turrets that had harried us earlier stood jutting from a window, and sitting at its aiming receptacle was the body of an Ork, his head charred and glowing blue from Anaiel’s flame. Along all of the walls were crates filled with what I could only guess were spare guns and knives for the Ork chaff that had snuck around us from below.

	“Does H’aman fare well?” Captain Daessios broke the silence.

	“Yes- you used his real name?” I pointed out, a bit taken aback. Captain Daessios had pinned the names Burns, Witch, and Shield on H’aman, Anaiel, and myself since we were initiated into the Deathwatch.

	“The mission is over, you have passed your test. You are soldiers of the Deathwatch now,” Captain Daessios explained, “I just received word that the Orks are retreating into the mountains. This planet’s guardsmen can handle whatever is left of the threat, our work is done here. Shuttles will take us back to our ship before the sun sets on this place. Emperor be praised.”

	“Emperor be praised,” I echoed, “I have H’aman’s gun. He is unwell and cannot move without medical attention, but Anaiel says he will pull through in the end.”

	“Burn the corpse, I shall call for an apothecary- “

	Before Daessios could finish, a shadow filled the room. Darkness enveloped my vision, and at first I thought it was a malfunction in my helmet’s tracking systems. Then, I heard my Captain begin to scream in utter fury, rage, and pain. I brought H’aman’s gun high, and began to discharge it at the ceiling, hoping the fire would illuminate the room around me. It was as if the darkness itself snuffed the flames, for no light emanated from the weapon. My Captain still cried, and I heard the clang of metal against metal, the sounds of combat. We were being ambushed, but this darkness was nothing I had seen the Orks do before.

	I heard footsteps behind me. I spun around, and hefted the shield I still carried high, going low to the ground as to avoid any fire this new combatant might unleash. I needn’t have bothered, as Anaiel’s voice sprang high, exclaiming in the words of High Gothic, “Let There Be Light!” the entire room was illuminated anew in blue radiance. I raised my head above my shield, and looked into the face of Anaiel under his heavy hood. His eyes red in pigment and fury, but sputtered into something like horror.

	I turned around again to see my Captain in pieces. His arm had been severed from his body, and lay flat against the ground ten feet away from the rest of him, leaving a scarlet trail in its wake. Daessios himself was bloody as well, for gashes and cuts lined across his armoured frame, making him look more like jigsaw pieces forced together against their design than a man. His helmet was carved open, and his face, glazed with the macabre signs of death, lay in an eternal scream of anger and pain. My heretical fantasies had been realized, Captain Daessios, my murderer, my teacher, and my Captain lay dead on the cold stone before me.

	His killer was not the greenskin threat we were planning to face. It was unlike anything I had ever seen, clearly not human but something disgustingly alien. Half of its body was covered, or maybe composed of, gnarled tree roots that pulasted with veins and capillaries. The rest of its body was a twisted mass of silver, chrome, and crimson, the latter of which was most clearly the blood of Captain Daessios. It had three arms and no legs, but was held aloft by some skittering creature. It was kneeling, if such an action could be conferred to this monster, next to the corpse, its hands searching along his various belt pouches and compartments.

	I did not waste time with the aberration. I rose H’aman’s flamer high, pointing its deadly nozzle towards the repulsive violation of life that had taken my Captain, and unleashed holy fire upon it. The creature looked up at me with a single green eye, and snarled at me. The fire washed over it, but also seemed to pass through its carapace as if it was not truly there. It retrieved a strange staff, not too unlike Anaiel’s, and thrust it towards me. Light as green as its eye shot towards me at the pace of a bullet, and I rose my shield to hopefully deflect whatever malevolent energy it cast upon me. By the time I lowered my aegis, the creature was scuttling out of the window where it had presumably come in from.

	The danger averted, I dropped H’aman’s gun, and ran towards the body of Daessios. I scanned him for any faint signs of life, but he was already gone. There was nothing I could do for him now. I looked up to see Anaiel beside me, his red eyes grim as he looked about the Captain’s corpse. In the event where Captain Daessios would fall in battle, I was to take command of our Kill Team, and it was clear with H’aman barely conscious and Daessios dead, Anaiel would look to me to find out what we should do next.

	“Return to H’aman, I do not want him unguarded in his current state. I shall… I shall make contact with the nearest Deathwatch Superior, and inform him of the situation. We shall fortify this position should the creature return,” I tried to sound stern, but I was still caught with disbelief of the situation.

	“Theodus- “

	“Do as I command, there was one of those things, there may be more.”

	“Yes sir,” Anaiel nodded his head, and walked back to H’aman without another word.

	I was good on my word, and within a minute I had another Kill Team acknowledge me, and promise to be at my location within the hour. After I had made contact, I looked back at Daessios, Captain no longer. His eyes were still alight with fury, he never stopped fighting that creature. The alien was searching him for something, his pockets still lie open and mostly empty. Spare magazines for his pistol and grenades lay strewn hap-hazardly on the floor. I knelt down by him again, and began to search him myself.

	He had a copy of the Codex Astartes pinned to the back of his belt, a manuscript of war written by one of the Sons of the Emperor, and the Primarch for my previous chapter of Space Marines. It was lined in gold, and held a series of purity seals signifying its holy imperative to drive back the forces of Chaos and the Heretic. His power sword was a relic he had kept from his home chapter of the Black Templars, space marine zealots who fought with the fury of the Emperor himself. It was engraved with a black cross, the insignia of that chapter. On the surface, there was nothing the alien could have made use of.

	The other Kill Team arrived at our position whilst I was still looking through Daessios’s things. What happened next was a wash in my mind. An apothecary carried away H’aman with Anaiel in toe, and I remained in the room where the murder took place. The scent of death, both from Daessios and the Ork Warboss, was beginning to fill the room. The Captain of the other Kill Team questioned me about the mission, how it progressed, and how it culminated into this. I answered truthfully, withholding no detail. He repeated his line of questioning perhaps fifteen times before relenting. We were all tired.

	We left the manufactorum, and went to the guardsmen’s barracks. The citizenry and workers were being escorted back to their positions, the monotony of their tasks beginning to take hold again. I immediately went to the infirmary, where hundreds of guardsmen were stationed as patients. Servitors and medics ran through halls while screaming and pain seeped into the minds of all present. The casualties of war were always numerous. I decided to agree with my Captain posthumously, we should have come sooner.

	I found my battle brothers sequestered away from the bulk of the suffering masses. H’aman had been stripped of his power armour, for he lay naked on the white bedsheets. His burns were being attended to with sacred unguents and soothing balm. H’aman was sleeping, at peace. I craved his rest, and knew that I would be getting some soon enough.

	“We are wickedly fortunate,” Anaiel broke the silence, “due to H’aman’s injuries, we’ll be some of the first to return to the ship.”

	“You find fortune in this, Anaiel?” I questioned, cold in my voice.

	“I find fortune in all things, the Emperor’s blessings can come in small, hidden places as well as shining, golden ones,” Anaiel smiled. It was a weary expression, one that begged me not to test his faith. I relented.

	“Earlier you told me we would speak of the Captain,” I remembered.

	“Brother, please, wait until we return to the ship. We need rest more than arguments,” Anaiel seethed.

	I agreed with him in silence. I walked over to the wall, and tried to think of quiet things. My mind had been tumultuous throughout the entire mission, filled with heretical doubt and treason. My worst, and yet best wishes had been fulfilled with my Captain’s death, and I knew not how to think on it. I breathed deeply, and began to think about other things, simpler things. At one point, I opened my own copy of the Codex Astartes, and instinctually read a passage.

	“The warrior who acts out of honour cannot fail. His duty is honour itself. Even his death, if it is honourable, is a reward and can be no failure for it has come through duty. Seek honour as you act, therefore, and you shall know no fear.”

	“Daessios died with honour,” was all Anaiel responded.

	“Yes. He did.”

	I closed the Codex Astartes, and tasted salt on my lips.


[[Category:Stories/Warhammer 40,000]]