Editing Knights Repentant (section)

===Meeting of Brothers===

The Year of Our Emperor 40,697. 
Imperial Army trooper Lieutenant Damian Jerr's diary.

The thunder of our support trooper's artillery rolls across the desolate battlefield, and the roiling cloud cover overhead threatens to break at any time, pregnant with the threat of rain. I know only that my orders come from the very top, and they demand I and my squad hold this trench at any cost. I am growing to despise this hellish place.

This world is of little importance to us. It offers no material wealth, for its mines are infested with heretics. It offers no place or respite or faith, for the churches are toppled, or sanctified to heathen gods. Yes, gods, strange as that would sound to my family, now long dead.
When I entered the Warp's embrace alongside the Word Bearers, chosen of the Emperor, there were no gods, save for rumors I had heard that the Emperor Himself might be worthy of worship. Now, ten thousand years in the future, those rumors are vindicated, and the Imperial Truth I lived my life under is revealed as the comforting lie it is. There are gods in this universe, but only one is on our side. And now, I must serve Him in this time of need, for the vox has ordered myself and my men to ready for a charge, though I cannot say my heart is in it.

I know who leads the enemy. How could I not?

He is one of the former Chaplains of the Word Bearers, a man I once knew quite well. Chaplain Francis Arestide, now styling himself a Dark Apostle and wearing the enemy's colors, wants nothing more than to kill us all and sacrifice our souls to his masters. Of all the terrors I have beheld in this new age, this is the one that stabs my very heart. I listened to the Chaplain's sermons on more than one occasion, and I remember him as he was, a kind, loving man devoted to his task and his service was an ideal of selflessness that we all strove to equal.

What has gone so wrong, that I must raise my lasgun against him?

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Bolter shells whizzed past, howling like damned souls, and the smoke of battle was so thick that a man could practically walk upon it. Captain Taskel Han screamed orders into his vox, urging his men forward into the fog.

"Brothers! The way is clouded, go to cover and ground for forty-five seconds... Now!" The men of the Chapter obeyed almost without thought, hurling their bulky power armor into the various ditches and craters left by rampaging artillery strikes mere hours before. "Imperial Army, I need Basilisk support on my position immediately! Set your rounds to airburst ten meters above ground level, designated by my armor's locator beacon as altitude. Fire immediately, then await my signal."

The response was swift and affirmative, and after ten seconds, a rolling rumble the Captain could feel even through his armored boots told him that the shells were in flight.

Taskel stood perfectly still, a hymn to the Emperor on his lips, and at the exact moment he finished, twelve explosions burst above his head, buffeting the armor with airshock but dealing no harm. Suddenly, the heretics were exposed, their concealing smoke gone, slapped aside like the hand of the Emperor Himself had pushed it away. Had Captain Taskel been a poetic man, he could have written an ode to the moment. As it was... perhaps a hymn for his next service?

As his men scrambled to their feet to resume the assault, Captain Taskel was already moving, letting his Jump Pack carry him from trench to hole to boulder, pausing only long enough to drop grenades into every spot of cover and punish the cowards for their weakness. His true targets lay ahead.

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The sight took his breath away as he crested a low ridge, arriving at the sacrificial altar built by those he once called his own blood brothers. Gritting his teeth, he thought of the conversations that took place before ever making landfall, when the Chapter first noticed that the enemy was using transmission codes and protocols only used by their own people. The exchange was brief and terrible, and his eyes burned with tears of rage remembering how far his brothers had fallen.

And yet, part of him loved the idea of at last grappling with the brittleness within himself and his brethren, for here was a chance to grapple with their own failings in the most literal sense, and in so doing purge the weakness from their faith and flesh. Where some had fallen, the true Word Bearers would not. His lightning claws crackled with fierce desire, and the Captain touched off his thrusters, hurtling into the thundering sky.

Below stood nearly a full Company of traitors, Word Bearers with grotesque iconography decorating their graven flesh, and hideous script written upon flayed skin pinned in place to their armor. Guttural warcries echoed across the battlefield, as they deployed in patters both familiar and profane.

Captain Taskel could see where his Legion's combat maneuvers were tainted mockeries of the old ways, where pinwheeling formations of men spun and reformed as they advanced, praising each of the Chaos gods in turn as a six man formation picked up two more, then lost one and became seven, an eternal carousel of profane worship to all the gods they now served.

And yet, their madness bore fruit as the first ranks clashed, and the loyalists came off the worse. Where marine fought marine, suddenly he fought two, as a traitor disengaged and spun past his opposite number.

As the fight raged on, it became clear that the traitors were orchestrated in a grand and terrible dance, performed by experts and maddeningly complex, anticipating the loyalist's moves almost before they made them.

Captain Taskel could feel fear gripping his hearts as his brothers died, and somewhere deep within, there were voices urging him to give in to the slaughter, and join the dance of death.

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Thoughts of Lorgar were ever in the Captain's mind, impossible to dislodge ever since he had learned of his Primarch's treachery. Could Lorgar have been right? Was the Captain the true fool here? Pushing his doubts aside, he dropped from the sky like the angel of death he was.

Hell rose to claim him, as daemons burst from the sacrificed cultists and charged the loyalist ranks.

Time seemed to stretch unmercifully, and the universe shrank to a tiny point of fury as Captain Taskel moved from body to body and converted them to cooling meat. The violence was unending, and the blood rage pumped through his veins as he struck back at the fallen Word Bearers unmercifully.

The Chapter took heart at the sight, and with renewed hymns on their lips charged forward with such passion that the heathen dance faltered and the players became confused as their coordination faded away.

As the Captain disemboweled what seemed like the hundredth daemon, his rampage was abruptly halted by a massive crozius, tainted and reconsecrated to Chaos, blocking his sight as it crashed into his armored helmet. The mighty Daemon weapon, for only a possessed stave could shriek and writhe as it did, slapped him off his feet as his crushed helmet bounced off into the maelstrom of the battle and was lost.

Exposed, Captain Taskel's enhanced eyes beheld a face he never thought to see again, unmistakeable despite its disfigurement: Chaplain Arestide, now in service to darkness, a cruel sneer upon his lips.

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As Captain Taskel dazedly fell to the ground, the armored giant loomed overhead. "Well, well, well, the prodigal sons return. I always wondered where the rest of the Eighteenth Chapter had wandered off to." Dark Apostle Francis twisted his features into a mocking grin and spoke in a mewling, petulant voice. "You think your Corpse-God preserved you to spare you the oh-so-dreadful fate of becoming as we are? You think he saved you for a purpose? HAH!" The Dark Apostle's voice rose to a furious thunder, and Captain Taskel's memories were drawn back to a time when that commanding voice roused the Legion's faithful to war. A voice to drown the enemy in fear and bolster the soul. How terrible it had become in its corruption.

"I tell you now, unenlightened one, that it was Chaos, not the Emperor, who preserved you. Indeed, Father Nurgle himself has surely delivered you unto us that we may crush you and drink of your despair! Lord Tzeentch has twisted your fate to his own ends! Blood-drenched Khorne sends us the only opponents worth fighting, our own brethren, and Beloved Slannesh lets us sup upon irony so delicious it sets my nerves aflame! You and your men are the banquet, the feast-day held in our honor for our service to Chaos, and your bodies shall be the meat on which we dine! Everything you are will be delivered unto Chaos, and they shall reward us mightily as we snip off this final loose end of our Legion!"

Taskel staggered to his feet, spitting out a dislodged incisor along with a gobbet of blood. He said nothing, merely activating his lightning claws once more. Slashing forward, sparks clashed with daemonfire as talons met crozius.

"Why do you resist, little one? We will accept you! We will gladly welcome you into our company, and the hole you feel in your heart will be filled as you rejoin those you should never have left! I will teach you our ways and you will know true power, not this weakling faith you profess in a man long dead at Horus' hands! The war is over, and the Imperium lost! Lorgar showed us the true way, the eternal road of strife and glory!"

Traskel stabbed forward in a whirlwind of stabbing talons and flaring jump thrusters. The fight shifted abruptly as the Captain took the conflict into three dimensions, jumping above the Apostle, blinding him with jets of flame, and spinning around to shred the power pack he bore on his back.

As Francis shrieked in rage, clearing the soot and char form his visor, Taskel spoke at last. "Where are your gods now, traitor? I do not see them here. You betrayed everything we stood for, you followed our Primarch into damnation without a second thought. Did it ever occur to you what you were forsaking? Did you ever ask yourself why you fell?"

The daemon weapon slashed out where the blinded Apostle could not see, catching Taskel a shattering blow across the left knee. Despite the superhuman marine's pain tolerance and determination, no amount of willpower could keep his leg from buckling, and writhing, fang-covered limbs sprouted from the crozius to begin chewing through the ceramite shell and reach the tasty flesh within. Taskel screamed in agony, swinging his right hand forward as he fell. The deadly talon pierced deep into Francis' breastplate, and great gouts of ichor burst forth as the spikes withdrew.

Lashing out in terrible rage, Francis hammered Taskel with punch after punch, sending the marine reeling backward. Coughing up blood with every labored breath, Francis laughed darkly, glaring at his opposite number. "You want to know why we turned from the Emperor's shackles? Behold."

Dark words in accursed tongues rolled from his lips, burning the very air around him as wisps of energy congealed into daemonic forms. Energy poured into the corrupted Chaplain, and his wounds knit with supernatural power. His power armor roared to new life as the energy of hell replaced his destroyed power pack, and Francis' body bulged into a hideous, titanic mockery of the Space Marine form.

Taskel stared upwards at the bloated behemoth before him. Fangs, mouths and eyes sprouted seemingly at random, and lashing tentacles draped over swollen muscles, their growth competing with rancid decay consuming flesh as quickly as it grew. "This is what you want, brother? You truly desire this hideous body? Very well, you've made your choice. And I must now make mine." Speaking into the shattered remnants of his vox, Taskel called in a barrage on his own position. "I will not let you defile our chapter, this world, or this galaxy any longer. You have no place in this realm, monster."

Firing his Jump Pack at maximum power, the Captain hurled himself bodily into the shambling, possessed mass that was once a Marine.

All the power of the Chaos Gods couldn't stop his Lightning Claws from digging in, and as their electrical power grounded itself in one final burst of sparks, Taskel welded his hands bodily to Francis' wrecked armor even as his own flesh failed him entirely and his abused body went limp inside the armor. The monster thrashed and roared, and Taskel laughed as it chewed into his useless flesh with twisted limbs. "Come, brother, join me in death, and we shall see what happens to those who go to meet their gods! The Emperor will be waiting for me with open arms, will the demons you serve be so welcoming and kind?" "Fool! I shall be ascendant! Your pathetic weaponry will not stop me! I am blessed of Chaos! I serve as Lorgar did! Chaos Eternal!"

The cries of both marines disappeared in a thunderous crash of munitions, and the battlefield quaked as if alive and wounded.

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In the unnatural quiet afterwards, the traitor Word Bearers faltered for the last time, and though they reaped a terrible toll on the Chapter and its support forces, not a single one escaped the torn, blasted killing fields.

Of Apostle Francis, nothing remained, save the laughter of the daemons which promised him false power.

The Chapter slowly gathered around Taskel's fallen form, and as one took a knee and bowed their heads in prayer. Though Taskel's body was vaporized in an instant by the Imperium's fire, his armor was burned perfectly clean, pure grey without paint, making each and every wound and bullet hole stand out in ragged relief.

The armor was recovered and enshrined as a holy relic, for legend has it that Taskel's spirit inhabits the armor still. No champion has yet been deemed worthy to bear Taskel's armor.

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Epilogue:

Digi-log, Mechanicus Era +10,000. Magos Hal Selan recording.
Investigating rumors that chapter techmarines claim to have seen unusual activity in armor 332-65-Gamma's machine spirit. Data readouts indicate no such anomalies present. Machine spirit nominal. Unrelated anomaly detected; armor power core appears to be unstable. Levels of energy delivered fluctuate erratically, ranging from less than 10% power to more than 300% for brief periods. Bleedoff of energy noted around gauntlets. Recommend powering the armor down despite objections from chapter, lest the armor damage itself further.

Temporary solution achieved: Thunder Fists absorb overflow successfully, and have been attached.

Possible correlation of power spikes to fluctuations in the Geller Fields unconfirmed, but bear further investigation. Possible link between machine spirit and Chaos presence. If armor or machine spirit is tainted, disassembly and destruction procedures are required.

End Of Log.