Editing Confessions of a Wayward Son (section)

==Confessions of a Wayward Son VI==

When Prospero died, there was little glory in its death.

Lance batteries struck its surface in bright beams of incandescent death, splitting the earth into great smoldering ravines. Bombardment cannons rained massive shells onto the land, demolishing entire mountains with their destructive fury. Plasma torpedoes slammed into the besieged planet in a dozen places, boiling away whole oceans and incinerating entire cities.

I watched this in horror, as did the warriors of my Fellowship. Our horror turned to anger and wrath. What treacherous foe would dare attack the homeworld of the Thousand Sons?

The answer shocked us all.

From the bombarding fleet above came hundreds of screaming Stormbirds painted in grey. Screaming missiles blazed across the skies on contrails of fire, impacting across the entirety of the capitol city, and blasting apart innocent civilians and Prospero Spireguard alike. Heavy bolters spat volleys of detonating shells and ripped fleeing men and women into bloody ribbons. Lascannons hissed and slew tanks and buildings indiscriminately with concentrated beams of light.

The Stormbirds landed, armored hulls pitted and scored from our return fire. Numerous gates clanged down, smashing into ruin the streets the people of Prospero had labored hard to build. And from the depths of each transport, in a mad charge of bared fangs and screeching chainblades, came a howling host of Space Wolves.

Giants of men, the Wolves of Russ were. The pelts of lupine beasts were stretched along their backs in a macabre decoration. Glistening wolf fangs were bared at us in bestial hatred, and howling warcries were directed towards our battle line. Ceramite fists clasped tight revving chainswords, shrieking frost axes, and mighty war hammers. Like the Nordic raiders of old Terran myth, the Space Wolves descended upon us in an orgy of bloodletting.

The earth shook at their thundering charge and the heavens were filled with their roars and bellows.

We stared into the face of destruction and could not believe that our destroyers would be our fellow brothers.

The Space Wolves and the Thousand Sons were never close. Magnus preferred the company of the faultless Fulgrim or the princely Sanguinius. Leman Russ was the epitome of what my primarch strove to avoid. Quick to anger. No patience. Ignorant and unwilling to learn. Looking back, I guess these differences in ideals was what lead to the inevitable clash.

All across the city, the sons of Magnus pulled back the firing pins on their bolters and readied for the oncoming storm.

I can always say with pride that the first shot was not fired by us. It was the Space Wolves that committed this sin. Their bolters spat death towards our ranks, injuring many, killing few. The only thing we could do now, was fight back.

Our own return fire ravaged the Space Wolf advance. Grey armored forms toppled and fell, wracked with agony as our weapons found their mark. Heedless of these losses, the Wolves continued on, howling war songs as they came.

To combat this threat, our sorcerers marched from our lines, fingertips outstretched and words of incantation upon their lips.

The first to strike were the members of the Pyrae. Masters of the flame, their unleashed sorcery engulfed entire swathes of the advancing Space Wolves in eldritch fire. Men burned inside their power armor, reduced to cinders and ash within seconds. Besides the Pyrae came their automata servants. War machines of hissing pistons strode alongside their human masters, cannons bursting with relentless fire. Wolves perished by the dozens by this onslaught, but onwards they surged, nevertheless.

Next to attack were the Pavoni. Able to manipulate their body chemistry to suit their purposes, they flung arcing tendrils of lightning at the Sons of Russ. Lethal whips of energies lashed towards the Wolves, splitting men apart with wild abandon. Those tendrils that did not strike men crashed to the ground and detonated, leaving glassy craters in the ground and throwing Astartes from their feet.

The sorcery of the Athanaeans followed that of the Pavoni. Able to read the thoughts of others at a whim and manipulate the unwary into doing their bidding, the Athanaeans played havoc with Space Wolf communications. Orders were countermanded, commands misconstrued, and warriors directed in the wrong direction. The Wolf charge became disorganized and confused, and were easy targets for the continued assaults by the Pavoni and the Pyrae.

Incorporeal barriers sprang up before our lines as the Raptora made their presence known. Where the sons of Russ focused their heavy weaponry, the members of Raptora were there to dull their effectiveness. Bolter volleys met psychic shielding and exploded without harming those behind. Far from being ineffective besides defense, the sorcerers ripped the limbs from our attackers through sheer telekinetic force and flung the Space Wolves’ own tanks into their ranks.

The last of our cults to perform their deadly arts were the Corvidae. They struck as the Wolves were bare inches away from colliding with our lines. Using their talent of precognition to their fullest, they danced around incoming bolter round and descending chainblades with flawless elegance. Their ripostes were lethal, unavoidable blows that drew rich Astartes blood from grey ceramite. Space Wolves fell like wheat before a scythe, and soon the Corvidae had littered the ground with dead enemies.

We roared our approval. The Space Wolves would pay for the treacherous deed of attacking another Legion. The Emperor made the bonds between Space Marines sacred. Harsh was His punishment for those who broke them. We were prepared to administer that punishment.

And then things went awry. One by one, our sorcerers cried out in shock as their powers failed them. Lightning fizzled and dissipated. Flames died out as though if touched by water. The barriers before us failed and collapsed. Shock turned to confusion and outrage. How dare the Great Ocean fail us now in our hour of need?

It was then we saw the reason why. Marching besides the Wolves came the warrior women of the Silent Sisterhood. The null maidens that would doom us all. And beside them marched beings that sent shock coursing through our ranks.

Custodians.

Our vox-net descended into chaos. Questions shot back and forth, asked by thousands of men all at once.

"Why are the Custodes here?"

"Why do the Custodes march with the Wolves?

"What madness is this? The Emperor's Praetorians could never march with traitors!"

Fine questions. All of them. I had no answer for them then, and neither did my brothers. A sudden horrible feeling sprang into my gut as I watched the figures wreathed in golden plate advance side by side with the Wolves. We had thought we were in the right in this conflict. But here were the Emperor's own bodyguards, coming to mete out judgment. Could it be we who were in the wrong? Could it be the Thousand Sons who were the traitors?

But that couldn't be, I remember thinking to myself. The XV Legion had done nothing to antagonize the Wolves and would never betray the Emperor's trust. The sons of Russ were the first to break the bonds of brotherhood, with their immense flotilla of starships raining destruction upon our world and slaughtering millions of Prospero's citizens. We did not provoke them. We were doing nothing more than defending our homeworld against unjust invaders. How could we be wrong?

I had no idea then, just how deep Magnus's betrayal was. I did not know that the Emperor sent the Space Wolves to bring us into custody. Had I known, I would have sank to my knees and accepted this sentence. Many of my brothers would have done the same.

Our Fellowship captains bellowed orders through the vox-net, telling us to target the Null-Maidens first. I raised my plasma pistol and took aim at the nearest Sister.

The two ranks clashed, one a howling tide of grey, the other a stalwart line of red.

My plasma pistol hissed, and I saw the Null-Maiden's eyes grow wide. A wave of scorching heat washed over her, reducing the warrior woman to specks of dust that blew back into the faceplates of the Wolves she was protecting.

The sorceror beside me spoke his thanks into his vox, and raised high his arms. A dozen Space Wolves were lifted into the air, their bellows of rage continuing even as they flailed wildly. The sorceror's hands clenched into tight fists, and at once the roars of anger turned into screams of agony. All the Wolves were dropped to the ground, their power armor crumpled as though if crushed by armored fingers.

The sorcerer once again rose his arms to work his art, but this time, nothing came from his outstretched fingers. Another Silent Sister had taken the place of the one I incinerated, and before I or my brothers could slay her, the Wolves hit us in full force.

The Sons of Russ were a whirlwind of destruction. Their shrieking chainblades rose and fell with no elegance, no finesse. They did not need them. The Space Wolves relied on sheer power alone to break through the enemy, and none so far had been able to defy them. But here, on the sandswept plains of Prospero, against the warriors of the Thousand Sons, that doctrine would be solely tested.

Our line held, bolters blazing, staff-blades slicing. Exploding shells detonated against war plate, both grey and crimson, and left screaming men on the war trodden soil. Plasma cannons hissed and whined, turning entire squads of Astartes into floating motes of scorched ash in a heartbeat. Lascannon beams streaked wildly back and forth, punching holes into tanks and vaporizing men. War blades met and showers of sparks rent the air. Frost axes sundered apart those in crimson. Staff-blades impaled those in grey.

It was here on this battlefield that I killed my first Space Wolf.

His armor was pitted and scarred from our punishing fire, and his shoulderguard was singed from the Pyrae's sorcery. He came at me with a snarling chainaxe, monomolecular teeth whirring with fierce delight. I blocked the brutal strike with the haft of my staff-blade, my arm shuddering from the force of Astartes muscle.

I did not want to kill him. Strange, considering our line had already clashed with theirs. I could not shake off the feeling that this, this butchery between brothers, was wrong. We were all created for one purpose by the Emperor, to ensure the progress of the Great Crusade. By slaughtering each other here, we were destroying the very fabric of what we shed blood for so long to build.

As I turned aside his blow, I spoke into the vocalizers within my helm, begging him to stop this madness. He refused to listen, and struck again with his axe.

"Sorceror!" the Wolf spat through his own vox-emitters, "Warp-dabbler! Traitor!"

His last word drove me to the height of fury.

We were not traitors in this. We could not be. We were not the ones bombarding a brother Legion's homeworld. We were not the ones slaughtering a brother Legion's people. When the veil of battle lifted and the bodies of slain Astartes cooled, we would be remembered as the righteous and the Wolves would be decried as the traitors. I was sure of this.

How the fates laugh at the confident.

The Wolf would not listen to my pleas. His chainaxe descended upon me again and again, only to be parried by my stave. Finally, I gave in to the battle lust that sang in my own blood.

I rammed my weapon deep into the Space Wolf's chest, the keen edges of my weapon slicing through his ceramite protection. As the Wolf's body grew limp, his eye visors locked with mine.

"Traitor!" he spat and died.

A second passed where I remained motionless. A thousand thoughts raged into my conscience, slamming against the walls of my mind. I nearly dropped my stave from my fist.

I just killed a brother Astartes. I slew him and broke my sacred vow to the brotherhood between Legions. I looked to the heavens and waited for a lightning bolt or sheet of flame to strike me down for my blasphemy. No such sign of divine anger materialized. Lances of bright energy continued to desecrate Prospero's crust from the spaceships in orbit, but none descended upon me.

The next Space Wolf leapt at me, his unhelmeted features tight in a scowling mask of hate. This time no pleas for understanding came from my lips. My pistol spoke, and I vaporized the Wolf while he was in midair.

Once again no streak of lightning or billowing carpet of flame struck me for the sin I committed.

The third son of Russ to come at me bore a screeching chainblade in each hand. He charged at me like a maddened berzerker and I met him with my staff-blade. I could not match his strength, but I was his superior in terms of technique. Blows were dealt and returned in a heartbeat, each strike like blurs to mortal eyes. I rammed my stave into the Wolf's unprotected neck, and ended his life impaled on my weapon's blades.

As chemically-rich blood streamed down the haft of my staff, I again peered into the skies. Only the shapes of warships greeted my gaze, each one framed against a blood red sky and spearing beams of light into the flesh of the world I loved.

There was no punishment incoming for my crime. No divine retribution coming to destroy me for the atrocious sin of slaying another Astartes.

For the first time in my life, I wondered what strength there was in the bonds of brotherhood.

Our line held, despite the savagery of the Space Wolves. Short ranged firefights erupted where the sons of Russ could not bring their swords and axes to bear. Bolters spat death in continuous volleys, blasting off chunks of ceramite from power armor on both sides. Sheets of burning promethium jetted out from flamers, covering groups of battling Astartes in fiery agony. Men fell, clad in grey and crimson, and turned the sand beneath our feet into mud with their blood.

Where the Space Wolves struck the hardest, our line buckled, but held. Here, there were no staccato booms of roaring boltguns. Instead, there were the piercing wails of chainswords and the eerie thrum of power weapons as warriors of both Legions were embroiled in a bloody melee. Pistols barked at face range, driving exploding shells into bellowing men. Lightning Claws slashed. Power fists pulped. Thunder Hammers smashed. The men who died here could not fall, for the ranks were so crowded together, there was no room for them to topple.

Intermixed with the Space Wolves, were the gold clad forms of the Sisters of Silence and the Custodians. Two handed swords crashed into Thousand Son skulls, and were riposted by thrusting staff-blades. Guardian Spears stabbed and cleaved, parting limbs and heads from ceramite bodies before their owners were slain by vengeful Astartes.

If this had continued, both Legions would have surely been decimated by the senseless slaughter. Hundreds of thousands of Marines would have died for no purpose, myself probably as well.

This was changed when Leman Russ, primarch of the Space Wolves, smashed into our formation. Flanked by two wolves the size of lions, The Lord of Fenris singlehandedly tore our line into pieces.

Wielding a mighty sword crafted from the maw of Great Kraken Gormenjarl, the Primarch of the VI Legion was the picture of raw aggression. With vengeful howls his blade flashed down and slew Astartes with every stroke. Crimson figures fell in droves before the Wolf King's advance, power armor sundered and torn. Return blows from our own blades did nothing to Russ, glancing off his indomitable form or bouncing from his immense war plate. Even our sorcerers were of no use against this powerful being crashing through our lines. Lightning whipped at the Wolf King and flames scoured his frame. Leman Russ laughed and shrugged these attacks off as though if they were nothing.

We could stand against the Wolves, against the Sisters, and against the Custodians. But we could not stand against a primarch. Our attempts to resist was crushed by this demigod who could shrug off a blow that would have killed a mortal man ten times over.

We could not best him. But we had someone who can.

All across our ranks, the vox-net came alive in desperate cries. Throats ragged from overuse shouted out again, saying the same words over and over.

"Magnus! Magnus! Save us Father!"

But our primarch did not answer our pleas for aid. It was on later did we learn that Magnus had refused to battle alongside us to atone for the sins he had committed.

Leman Russ's advance could not be halted. My brothers gave ground, slowly at first, but when the Wolves following their primarch poured into the hole within our line, the fighting withdrawal dissolved into a series of desperate last stands.

But this was not all. Another disaster, even more heinous than this bloodshed between brothers, struck us in full force.

I watched in horror as a Space Marine, clad in the livery of my Legion and not three steps from my position was taken by the flesh-change.

The Astartes screamed in agony, his voice carrying over into the vox-net. This was no cry of pain and agony, it was a shriek from a man in fear. But we were Space Marines. We did not know fear. And then I saw the reason for my brother's scream and I will admit now that I became afraid.

The Thousand Son's flesh erupted from the joints in his armor, squeezing through gaps like molding clay. The skin on his flesh grew blotched and sickly, and leaked from his war plate like a river bursting from a sundered dam. His wails became maddened and insane. Soon, there was no more proud Astartes of the XV Legion. Just a hideous blob of expanding meat.

The flesh-change. Mutation. The weakness that all of us shared.

More screams sounded into the vox-net. All across the line, Space Marines clad in crimson fell to their knees, their bodies quivering from multiple pain-induced spasms. I cried out in horror as men were turned inside out by the ravages of mutation, while others became twitching, twisted parodies of themselves. Thousands of my brothers were affected at once, dying horribly as their unstable bodies expanded into hideous shapes.

Even the Space Wolves were horrified by this, and stopped their raging assault as they neared those who had fallen from the flesh-change.

I heard the word "retreat" bellowed again and again into the vox, and my feet took me away from the scene of carnage. I forced myself to look, in time to see the Wolves administer mercy executions to those mutated who were still alive.

I did not know it then, but this was the first punishment for a betrayal not ours.

In ragged groups, the Thousand Sons fell back, our bolters still firing but our aim wavering and unsteady. To see the flesh-change appear so suddenly amongst us destroyed our spirits and sapped our will to fight. Thankfully, the Space Wolves did not pursue, instead halting to kill those we had left to the throes of mutation. As we retreated, the vox-net came alive with the voices of sergeants and commanders, ordering head counts from the squads and companies they commanded. It was then, that we discovered just how terribly the flesh-change ravaged our ranks. Many of our best sorcerers, our finest links to the Great Ocean, had been lost, the majority claimed by the rapid deformities that violated their bodies.

We withdrew back to the pyramid spires that were the foundation of our cults. So very few of us left then. From a Legion of tens of thousands, we had been reduced to a paltry twenty hundred. Half of those alone that perished were dead because of the flesh-change.

We were not alone in our retreat.

The remnants of the Prospero Spireguard marched desolately beside us, their weapons dragging behind them in their defeated gait. Civilians, those few that survived the orbital bombardment, shuffled with us, carrying what little treasures they could save on their backs. This is what was left of the glorious homeworld of Thousand Sons. This is what remained of the most enlightened people in the Imperium.

A bastion of knowledge and wisdom died that day, consumed in the fires of hate from men we once called brothers.

As we approached Magnus’s sanctuary, we once more cried out to our father for aid. Once more, our pleas were ignored.

The pyramid towers that sprouted from the sand would be the place for our last stand. Gleaming like polished marble, they would become worthy gravestones for the XV Legion.

As distant engines sputtered and the howls of our adversaries grew nearer, we readied our weapons for one last battle. The Spireguard did the same, standing side by side with their superhuman kin, socketing bayonets to their rifles in the inevitable clash at close range. Only the civilians did not make ready to wage war. They huddled together for comfort, their eyes devoid of emotion. The sons of Russ had taken everything from these people short of their lives, and their haggard faces displayed the shock of losing so much.

We did not have to wait long for our destruction to arrive.

The Space Wolves advanced in the same way as before, brandishing their chainblades in plated fists. Like a solid wave of grey, they surged towards our feeble position, eager to close in for the kill. And like an angry god, was Leman Russ Himself, striding forward ten steps in front of the Wolf ranks. His war shouts were the loudest of all, eclipsing the rest in fury and volume.

We steeled our resolve and unleashed a volley of death from our roaring boltguns.

Warriors were punched back by detonating shells, their war cries turning to screams of suffering. Grey clad forms toppled, weapons falling from lifeless hands. Intermixed with the Space Wolf slain were the gold wreathed figures of Custodians and Sisters of Silence. Death visited all equally, and no difference in uniform prevented the Reaper’s Scythe.

But we were only two thousand, and what ruin we could visit upon the foe was greatly diminished. Return fire ravaged our own lines, and I saw good men, both Astartes and Spireguard die in spurts of their own blood.

With a triumphant cry, the Wolves slammed into our ranks like a sledgehammer, their rending blades descending upon our heads. We Thousand Sons resisted this fierce assault, but the mortal humans who fought beside us stood no chance. The Spireguard and civilians were slaughtered by the ruthless Sons of Russ, butchered in great disemboweling strokes from chainblade and frost axe.

As the men and women we had sworn to protect fell from savage blows, our voices entwined to call for our father once more.

This time, Magnus the Red answered our call.

Magnus was like a storm of devastation as he strode through our ranks.

Warp lightning streaked from my primarch’s palms, frying Wolves, Sisters, and Custodians alike with their destructive fury. A mere gesture from him and an entire squadron of Predator tanks were lifted from the ground and thrown into the mass of our enemies, crushing power armored forms beneath adamantium hulls. A single word uttered from our father’s mouth and a wall of flickering flames blazed towards the Space Wolves, igniting grey ceramite and turning Space Marines into living torches. The brows of the Cyclops narrowed and a hundred Astartes erupted in plumes of their own blood, popping like blisters from sheer telekinetic force.

We cried out in joy, and redoubled our efforts against our attackers. If our end was nigh, then this was the end we all would have chosen. Fighting shoulder to shoulder with our brothers with the primarch leading us to the end. This was glorious, and our veins sang with a battle lust that rivaled our foes.

The Thousand Sons would not cower as they died. We would die as Astartes should, a bolter in our hands and defiance on our lips. Imperial history would remember our end, and remember it well. The day the XV Legion fell would be ingrained in the minds of every righteous soul in the Imperium. The day when a handful of loyal men fought to the very last against heinous traitors. We would die on the sand swept plains of Prospero, but our legacy would live on, as protectors of the realms of mankind. The Space Wolves will win this battle, but their punishment from the other Legions and from the Emperor would swiftly follow. I was sure of it.

We followed Magnus’s steps, the thundering refrain from our boltguns interlacing with the screams of the dying to form a cacophony of battle.

And then we heard our primarch’s voice.

“Retreat,” he told us, his psychic voice more potent than any vox, “Fall back to the pyramid spires and do not come out.”

His order shocked us to our very core. We did not want to retreat, to fall back while our primarch died for us. How could we live without our father? How would the Thousand Sons be whole without the demigod that was our gene-sire? We could not watch Magnus die against the Wolves while we hid ourselves in his sanctuary.

We did not move from our positions, bolters still blazing at the grey clad foe.

“Go! Now!” came our father’s psychic scream.

We hesitated, looking to one another for support. It was Ahriman that was the first to break formation. Casting one last look at Magnus, Ahzek strode towards the pyramids and entered them, his head downcast and defeated. We followed the Chief Librarian, our hearts heavy with grief.

The massive gates slammed behind us, hiding the raging battle from our view. We did not realize it then, but the sight of our primarch flinging sorcerous energy towards the Space Wolves would be the last of the man we loved. What we saw after was a being corrupted by the very power he once controlled. That being was not my father, was not my primarch. The madman who rants and raves atop his obsidian tower is not the Magnus I once knew.

Prospero fell in this way, claimed by the orbital fire from Space Wolf ships, and its lord giving in to the Changer of Ways.