Editing /tg/ Heresy Writefaggotry (section)

===The Saber of Terra===

Terra was burning.

Weeks of Bombardment followed by days of brutal bloodshed had torn and disfigured the face of the throneworld. The forces of the bastard Warmaster were even now grinding towards the palace, tightening the noose around the Imperial Throne. Every man and woman who could were even now fighting back as hard as they could, doing everything possible to slow the attacks, to buy as much time as possible before they reached the shadow of the Palace, and the real struggle began.

Arturia Eld, Lord of the Knights of Accolon had immediately mustered her household and marched south with ten of her Knights, leaving the rest to stand beside the Regent of Terra and his Astartes. She was under no impressions that her knights could hold back the tide, but she could bleed the traitors, hammering them time and time again to inflict as much damage as possible and support the beleaguered Imperial Army forces.

The distant scene visible in her mount’s mechanical eyes was a shattered graveyard of twisted metal and fire. A hellscape of blazing craters, scores of wrecked tanks and thousands of dismembered bodies.

Thousands of giant warriors bearing the Eye Star of the Warmaster pushed forward behind heavy breacher shields. Against small-arms fire and even medium gauge weapons they offered effective protection, but against the kinds of guns the defenders had trained on them, they just weren’t up to the job. Each advance left a trail of bodies, limbless corpses and tributaries of blood to fill craters with red lakes. Thousands of Astartes were falling, yet thousands more were advancing.

‘Come on, my lord,’ urged Dux Cynric, one of her foremost Knights. ‘Let’s break them! Smash each one apart in turn until we roll the entire line up.’

She wanted to give the order. Oh, how she wanted to give that order. But she had fought a thousand battles before and she could clearly see the danger.

‘Yes, we could break one, probably two, maybe even three of the shieldwalls, but that will be all,’ she replied, feeling Caliburn’s ire at her refusal to ride. ‘Then we would be overwhelmed by the artillery and dragged down by their infantry. An ignoble death. Hardly knightly. No, there are other targets for us, ones which will make a far greater difference to the struggle.’

Her keen eyes scanned around, until they were immediately drawn to an up-armoured Spartan as it smashed through a rockcrete wall, slamming down on bollard tank traps and crushing them beneath its weight.

A banner streamed from the rear of both track guards, each bearing a serpentine caduceus. Gunfire sparked from the Spartan’s armour and Raeven saw the direct hit of a lascannon strike its flank where the right-side quad sponson had been sheared off. It should have blown a hole right into the vehicle.

Instead, the energy of the shot dissipated at the moment of impact and a bloom of fire enveloped the tank, setting the twin serpent banners ablaze.

‘Flare shield,’ she said, recognising similar tech to the ion shields of Caliburn.

This was a target worthy of her Knights.

‘Rally to me!’ she commanded. ‘Target is the Spartan to your ten. Cearl, Guoroar, Anirin, blow her open.’

‘Aye my lord!’ came the chorus of voices, as her knights began to move. Cearl, the ‘Wallbreaker’ took up position. His Castellan Knight was a heavy weapons platform, ideal for destroying large targets. Targets like that Spartan.

His Laser Destroyer opened up, the beams being barely blocked by the Spartan’s Flare Shield. The Spartan slowly turned, bringing its quad lascannons to bear, but Cearl was a master of snap fire, and he moved with it, denying it the chance to pummel his armour.

Meanwhile it had given the chance for Guoroar and Anirin to close, and now they were within range of their Errants Thermal Cannons.

With a hiss and a roar they opened up, and the Flare shield, already overtaxed by Cearl’s fire was unable to stop them.

The Spartan shuddered as its armour was turned to slag.

The front of the Spartan pistoned open in front of Arturia’s eyes. She saw something move in the space within, something that glinted dully in the fire.

And emerging from the Spartan…

Aubrey the Grey, bastard son, chosen of the gods, his armour blackened was down on one knee, one hand pressed to the side of his Spartan, as though mourning its passing. Blood slicked one side of his dark battleplate and a length of pipework pierced his side like a spear.

Arturia glared down at the traitor Primaerch, and she had never felt so sure, so righteous in the anticipation of a kill. Her arms burned hot with the readiness of her stubber cannons and the crackling energy of her mighty warblade.

She was a knight. She would fight this traitorous whoreson in fair and single combat, would kill him, and thus give the loyalists a true morale boost. They would see their foes were not all powerful gods, they could bleed and die like any man or woman.

‘This target is mine.’ commanded Arturia.



I should be dead.

Nerve endings on fire. Pain. Pain like he’d never known. Not even when he’d faced the kiss of Bohemonds mighty blade on Isstvan V.

I should be dead.

No time to reflect that he wasn’t. Deal with the pain. Force it down into the pit. Endure it later.

Aubrey rose to face the mighty Knight standing before him. The knight hadn’t simply killed him while he was down. Now that he was standing, it gestured, make a short bow and flourished its warblade.

It wants to fight.

He smiled. It had been too long since he had matched blades with a worthy foe. And instead of simply killing him, this Knight would willingly give away the advantages it had mere seconds ago, and cross blades with one it had no hope of matching.

"...Your faith, it is a cancer..." he whispered, as he unsheathed his twin blades.

Emerald eyes flashed dangerously, like venomous serpents towards the optics of the Knight, his gaze seemingly piercing through the screen as they blazed with the fury of a demi-god.

"I shall remove it."

He dived as the Knight’s blade sped towards him, parrying with Jörmun while Gandr flicked out, aiming at the Knight’s servos. At the last second the Knight stepped out of the way before bringing another crashing blow from its huge sword. He caught nit with both blades, before slashing Gandr across the Knight’s chest and the strange markings there. The knight smashed him back with its other arm, before once again bring its blade to bear.

This was not like any duel he had fought before. This Knight was good. Better than anything he had fought outside of his own brothers. It seemed to know where his blows would land, and moved with surprising swiftness to counter them, and could move its own blade with a speed and dexterity that he had never seen a Knight do.

Aubrey launched a series of blistering blows, glancing off the Knight’s thick pauldrons and forcing it to withdraw. He would make this engine and its pilot fight on his terms. Then, he would end it.

The Knight was tough. It absorbed every strike that connected, sucking the power out of the blows, taking the hits and coming back for more. Its armoured form could take more punishment then he had anticipated. It was covered in blade scars, but still fought. His own armour was cracked, the servos wheezing as they struggled to keep him moving at speed.

As he parried another mighty blade-strike, Aubrey felt himself tiring at last. Only rarely had he felt more than trivial stirrings of fatigue. He had fought the greatest champions of xenos races, had brought down creatures that stood as tall as Warhound Titans, had carved his way through fields of greenskins as violent and unending as the tides of the sea on Ullanor and slain his brother on the murder fields of Isstvan, and still he felt tired, exhausted by the competition with this Knight.

Aubrey rolled to his feet and ripped Gandr through a knot of pneumatics at the Knight’s ankle joint. It staggered, gyroscopic servos screaming as they fought to keep the war machine upright. Jörmun then flicked out and severed the Servos in the Knight’s gun arm. As it did, the Knight's blade tore into his shoulder, tearing the pauldron off and sending a spray of blood everywhere. Aubrey snarled in pain as the two broke from combat, facing each other, ready for the final confrontation, until the false peace was shattered.

One of the Knight’s standing guard went down, its upper torso detonating in a cherry red fireball. Aubrey turned to see a squadron of three Fellblades roaring over the wall, guns now thundering at the Knights.

Three Knights were all but obliterated in seconds. A fourth threw its ion shield up just quick enough to deflect the full force of a high-density shell that nevertheless ripped its entire arm and most of its shoulder away.

The Knights were monstrously outgunned and they knew it. The hunting horn of the lead Knight standing before him loosed an ululating blast and they retreated, quit the field of battle. The lead knight made a gesture with its warblade before it turned to flee. Aubrey knew that gesture.

‘This is not done. We will fight again.’

Aubrey relished the thought. Forget his brothers, enslaved for the whims of their false father, that knight, whoever it was in there was a truly worthy opponent, one who he could gift to the Gods, when the Palace fell and Terra was the Warmasters.



Arturia rose from the folding camp-seat and poured a large goblet of wine. Her movements were somewhat stiff. Caliburn had been damaged by the whoreson Aubrey’s attacks, and the repercussions of the Knight’s hurt were borne by her body.

He had been a hard fight. Maybe the hardest of her life. She had learned to fight from a young age, had mastered it. There was no man alive on Cattegirn who could defeat her in swordplay. And until now, she had believed there was no man who could defeat her in bladework when he was bonded with Caliburn.

But Aubrey was as fast as a striking serpent, and it had taken all her preternatural skills to keep up with him. She was only glad his blades were ineffective at cutting the armoured hide of Caliburn.

With the local Imperial commander dead, the task of coordinating the military retreat towards the next line of defence had fallen to her. The Regent of Terra Himself had asked it of her, and she was glad to help him. Anything to keep her mind off her defeat. That task alone was hard enough, but Arturia also had to deal with an ever-growing civilian component. Refugees were streaming in from the north and east, desperate to flee the advancing traitors.

She’d welcomed the burden, the role so consuming it kept her from dwelling on the loss of her Knights, and on her defeat. But now she had more time to reflect, and it all came back.

Dux Guoroar was gone. A brave young man, who she had commended personally for his conduct on 37-04. Dux Oswine, who loved drinking and fighting in equal measure. Dux Pendar, Dux Bors and Dux Korin also. Five of her bravest and best. Five of her Knights, her warriors. All dead by the hand of the traitors.

They would pay. She was a Knight, she would never stoop to their level. But she would make them bleed to avenge her slain warriors. She was the King of Cattegirn and the Lord of the Knights of Accolon. On her honour there would be justice.

‘My lord?’ Dux Aneirin poked his head into the tent.

Arturia turned to him. ‘News?’ she asked. She had been keeping tabs on the global war situation, and so far it did not look good.

‘The Emperor’s Praetorian. He wishes to speak to you. There’s a lander to bear you back to the palace.’

Arturia had been expecting something like this, but not yet. Not now. ‘Fine. Have Thegn Bedieve take over in my absence.’ She hoped the Emperor’s Praetorian had good reason for summoning her.

'''The Assault on Ostium'''
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