Post by brank on Mar 1, 2023 4:08:11 GMT
IDS Harbinger - Above Zaoth
Meralth sighed deeply. Her head fell into her hand as she shook her head, hair put up- a rare sight for the imperator- into a bun as she wore the combat garb of a Marine, repainted white and purple after the Imperium’s colors.
“Keroth, I must go. Elandra cannot go free to fight our troops, lest they die painful deaths. I need to do this.”
“Fight Elandra, on your own!? No! You’ll die before you even see her face!”
“Do not take me for a weakling, Young Imperator. I have seen battle before, and I can take her, be it by word or by hand.”
Meralth fingered the blade at her hip, plasma sparking as she bared her teeth at the silver-haired Imperator in front of her. She stood, and looked towards the door.
“I’m going.”
Ezekiel stood, and slammed his hand onto the desk before him, now yelling.
“You’re an Idiot, Meralth! You’re going to get yourself slaughtered down there! I forbid you to leave this ve-”
He was cut off as she spoke calmly, holding her hand up as the other grabbed the doorknob.
“Save your words for when I return, Young Imperator. Tonight, Elandra will either surrender or die.”
She paused and opened the door, and she spoke one last time, a searing pain at the edges of her voice.
“And with her, so too shall Zaoth.”
Ezekiel frowned, and Meralth left. She pitied the fool who bothered the boy now; he’s sure to fly into a rage as soon as she leaves.
Planetside - Landing Zone
The drop to the planet was rough, storm clouds roiling around the ship and gunfire resounding around them. Planes fought like birds of prey in the skies, making passes at one another and going down, down, down; crashing to the surface as a meteor of flame, and exploding. Artillery shot into the sky, arching back down with fireballs of explosion, and Imperial hovertanks lobbed plasma across streets and into targets. It was a painful sight for Meralth, to see what was once her home wrought by destruction by her Dominion’s hand.
Then the dropship landed, and she was ripped from her wayward train of thought. Metal boots clacked as soldiers, warily stepped off the dropship, each offering her a salute as they passed, hope in their eyes to see their Imperator on the field with them. She, too, stepped into the storm.
“Imperator, what are you doing here!?” called out an officer, walking up to Meralth as she walked from the dropship, her helmet pattered with stormy rain in the dark night of zaothm darkness and water engulfing them as thunder and gunfire sounded in the distance. Her response to the officer was drowned out by an explosion, and she had to repeat herself with a yell.
“I Come here to find the Warmaster! Do not stand in my path!”
She stepped past the officer, who saluted and nodded, stepping aside and letting her pass. She crossed through the frontline, closing her helmet to protect from the chilling storm. The night was lit up by distant gunfire, Meralth’s walk turning into a sprint as she followed a positioning system in her helm’s display, turning down sidestreets and crossing roads while gunfire was low, nearly being hit by a stray sniper’s bolt on numerous occasions. Heavy breaths found way from her needing lungs as she slowed to a quiet walk, her boot’s clack against stone drowned by the rain and thunder.
The Senate building stood before her.
“Now or never.” she told herself, sucking in a deep breath and laying hand on her blade, pulling it from its sheath with the distant shink of metal on metal. The blade was straight and made of a polished metal, gleaning silver in the moonlight. With a click of her button, plasma formed around its blade, rain pittering against it sizzling into hot steam as the purple glow provided a soft light around her. The handle was white leather, matching the pale purple of plasma and the same colors inlaid into her armor. Her grip tightened.
Meralth placed her foot out of the alley, and walked forwards, lifting her helmet away to take a good look at the senate, as she took the first step upon the staircase. Would she die here? No. She had to do this. She had to survive in the name of the Realm.
May the Dimming Star and the Waning Shadow bless her.
Zaoth, Imperial Defense Command, Forty minutes prior
"Get this over to the Eighteenth! They're to fall back against the hill while the courtyard divisions give counterbattery fire!" Elandra shoved the datapad into the courier's hands, who saluted and then took off. Jamming efforts and nuclear detonations in the atmosphere over the last week and more of fighting had ruined communications for both sides, while CONA fleet elements encroached at the edge of the system and gave a desperate sense of urgency to the fighting.
The door slammed open in time to a rolling boom of thunder and another courier shoved her way inside, shaking off rainwater before pulling out a dispatch. "Warmaster! The upper districts are breached, they're pushing on the Senate. The -" the courier hesitated briefly before continuing. "The defensive line is breaking. We can't raise the Imperator and his Legion was last seen in retreat from the Arneth Gate."
Elandra grunted and turned aside to sort through another pile of dispatches. "Let them. We've got mortars arrayed on the surrounding spires. We'll turn it into a charnel house and drive them back down into the mercantile districts."
At those words, the other woman went pale and clutched at her breastplate, babbling desperately. "N-no! You can't! You can't let them take the Senate! The Imperator-”
The Warmaster frowned. "The Imperator? I thought you said the 819th was in retreat and nobody had seen Gaos since Arneth was nuked. Who are you talking about?"
The courier sagged. "There was a last-minute shuttle from the orbital rings. It was packed with survivors from the nurseries, but they got shot down. Imperator Gaos did get a message through, commanding the survivors be rescued and safeguarded at all costs."
Another frown and a weary sigh. What could possibly justify this? More to the point, why wasn't the damn courier spitting out whatever the issue was...her train of thought trailed off abruptly as she remembered the first part of the message. The nurseries. Survivors. "Dammit!" She spat, jerking to her feet and shoving papers and pads aside. "Get the cohort ready to move."
---
Another crash of thunder. The weather had never been pastoral on Zaoth, situated as it was near the edge of the habitable zone and yet bleeding enormous amounts of heat into the atmosphere from its industry, but in the last year it had been truly awful. Nonstop storm winds and almost monthly hurricanes and typhoons. Slamming through the colossal Senate doors and wiping water from her face as the Legionnaires slammed them shut again behind her, Elandra glowered out at the storm and battle-wracked skies. The common folk had whispered that the increased storms and foul weather were the wrath of the Star, wreaking vengeance for the sins of the Houses and after all of this, she couldn't say that she disagreed, not really. Not to say a more substantial sign of divine displeasure wouldn't have been a welcome gesture to help steer the Houses back into line. Whimpering and sniffles from further inside the hall drew her attention away and the scowl faded.
Speaking of the Houses, it was time to figure out how to save the last remnants of them. If saved they could be, that is. Pushing her way through the last set of doors and into the main hall, she paused, looking over the small group of children clustered around the steps leading up to the Throne. There couldn't have been more than fifty of them, but they were all that was left. The Dominion had been hunting the adults of the Houses with an unholy fervor, binding them in chains or slaughtering them and making trophies from their corpses and now...
She sighed again, a dark and bitter cold spreading in her bones. And now she had to get them to safety. Or rather, buy them time. Another crash shook the Senate, and her eyes flicked up to the roof. That one hadn't been thunder. They were closing in, and she at least was out of time. A gesture brought the captain of the Senate guard over, and she clapped a gauntleted hand on his shoulder. "Time's up. Get them changed, slave garb if you have it. Then take them out the back entrances and go to ground. You won't be able to get offworld just yet, but keep an eye out, and run for it as soon as you can."
"Milor-" She slapped him, the crack of metal against flesh stark and loud in the quasi-silence of the hall. "That was an order, you imbecile. Those children are the Realm, and you and your men are going to defend them with your lives."
"But what about you? Surely you're coming too?"
She gave him her best 'idiot' glare before he backed down, eyes wide. "I" she enunciated, "am going to go out there and get myself killed like a Starbedamned moron to buy you time. If you waste that time, I am going to come back from death to gut you myself. Now get those brats out of here. And maybe see about raising them to be decent people while you're at it."
Striding away to gather her men one last time, she paused and looked up at the Throne. "Actually, Captain, if you would lend me your axe briefly?"
Several very satisfying minutes later, she locked her helmet in place and led her men out into the rain and the thunder. As the great doors swung open, she narrowed her eyes inside her helmet at the figure waiting for her on the steps.
Well then. A flick and a nonverbal helmet comm dispersed her squad to help with the rest of the fighting as she pulled her twin swords from her hips and walked down to meet the usurper, holding them lightly at her side.
"You know, your greatsire always said it would come to this again one day. A Vos and a Vakorian, locked in battle for the Throne and Realm alike. Not sure he would've seen this coming, though."
One last glance upward just as a fighter came streaking out of the sky and ripped into the side of a spire. And then she lit her blades with a crackle and a snap of plasma as the sky blazed with fire and the crumbling spire rained debris down around them. "So let's have it then. Stand and fight. Fight for the crown, fight for power, fight because you're too fucking stubborn to see where this ends." She took a breath and continued, the echo of this woman's ancestor's words ringing in her ears. "Fight because Zaoth burns and Ragnarok is here at last."
Meralth faltered for but a moment. A step she didnt take, looking up towards Elandra. This is it, the fight for the Realm.
"Surrender, Warmaster! You know I don't want to fight you!"
She growled and lifted her blade, slicing through the rain with a hiss of sizzling steam. The purple light shone in the darkness like a beacon of hatred and yet, hope. Swiveling and turning, the blade-point found itself aimed right at the Warmaster, Meralth's grimace still ever present as she called out through the misty night, hoping to bring Elandra to her senses.
"Fight me now, and Die. Surrender, and Live. I can guarantee you that much. The Realm may be burning around us, but you don't have to!" Meralth hissed, her words nearly drowned out as a craft streaked overhead, crashing down like a fireball into the streets below- accompanied by screams.
Elandra lunged, swinging with her blades as Meralth pulled her sword around to parry, the shock of metal-to-metal bringing a sore ache upon her, although it was nothing she'd not experienced before. The plasma sizzled, and crackled against itself, bursting in the rain like hot oil left too long on a stovetop, ready to burn into ash. They pushed blade into blade, both sneering and baring their teeth as thunder sounded off in the distance.
"This doom is given to me and is mine alone. This fate I cannot forefend." replied Elandra, eyes shimmering in the purple light of their blades.
Elandra broke the bladelock with a twist and followed up with a kick that sent Meralth stumbling down several steps. Bringing her blades back up to a ready position, she spat at the Imperator.
"Are you satisfied, girl? Look around you!" A gesture of her right sword encompassed the ruin and death ongoing around them. "You've come home at last, to be sure. And you brought that bloodthirsty mongrel with you. Do you see the battle-hunger in his eyes, I wonder? How long before the oh-so-noble Imperator Ezekiel begins to hunger for more power and acclaim? How long until the thought of sharing the little scraps of power he does with you are a raw, aching wound to him?"
An enraged howl was her only answer as Meralth charged up the steps and the two women traded blows again in a flurry of steel and crackling plasma.
Meralth swung the blade wide as they clashed again, steel crashing against steel. With a swipe, she kicked out Elandra's feet and slashed through the warlord's cheek with the searing tip of her plasma blade, panting as she turned her head towards the Warlord once again.
"No, Vos! The Boy will find his way in time, I'm sure of it! He must find a way to control the dreft-blood that courses through him. The Dominion.." she paused, doubt in her voice. "The Dominion will surpass all that the Imperium Achieved! I must have faith in him, lest he grow worse!"
Elandra stood, growling as she pulled her blades up once again, the wound of a blade burned into her cheek.
"Tell me, Meralth. Where do you think the cycle ends!? Because I tell you, as sure as the sunrise that it will not end here. Not if you and that boy of yours march before the Throne as conquerors! Power's addictive, and once your people get a taste of it, they'll want more. Mine did!"
Meralth recoiled as the warlord charged her, blade meeting blade again as they clashed in the rainy night.
"I won't let them!" she cried, wincing as she poured all her strength into fighting back against the mental and physical assault that Elandra had shoved her into. "We aren't like you!"
A mocking sneer as the Warmaster leveraged her higher positioning to force Meralth's blade slowly back. "Maybe you won't," she purred, poison dripping from her words, "but he will. I've been watching him, this whole war. He's tasted blood and he's starving for more, I can see it in his eyes. You and I both know how that ends."
"You're wrong, you have to be!" A desperate shove and a shoulderbash that knocked Elandra from her feet, sending her toppling down the stairs. Still shouting denials, Meralth rained blows down on her with blade and fist and armored boot. Coughing and spitting blood, Elandra pulled one of her swords back and delivered a slash across Meralth's inner left thigh, prompting a scream of agony. Grabbing her foot, the Imperial twisted with a ringing snap, prompting another wounded shriek. Tossing the impudent girl back, she pushed herself to her feet with a pained whine and then spat a mouthful of blood as she retreated up several steps, panting and gritting her teeth against the fiery pain of multiple broken ribs.
"Let's not make liars of each other, not here and now. You can see it, just like me. I have to wonder, are you denying it so fiercely because you think I'm actually wrong...or because you can't bear for me to be right?"
Meralth gasped in pain, stumbling to limp on her broken foot as she sucked in gulps of air. Ripping off her helmet, she tossed it to the side, her eyes glowing with a sad mixture of fear and rage.
"No. No.. No!" She cried, pain tingling at the edges of her voice as the wounded two charged one another.
"You only deny the inevitable, Girl! You're blind to the horrors that boy creates. He's no better than any Imperial!" yelled Elandra as the blades struck one another once more, the clash ending quickly as each recoiled backwards.
They crashed into one another again, blades locked as Meralth was pushed back, silent in her painful and enraged grimace, too silent-
A shock of agony rippled through Elandra as she gasped, burning of plasma as Meralth's hand buried deep in the warmaster's stomach, plasma crackling like torn wires as blood gushed.
"It's over."
"Ngghhhh" Elandra shuddered, the motion causing ripples of searing pain to wrack her insides. Panting through gritted teeth, Meralth twisted her hand then ripped it out while lashing her sword across Elandra's chest.
Pain, white-hot and paralyzing, ate her world from the inside out as she crumpled and slid down the now charred and blood-slick stairs. Limping, Meralth came down to meet her, a fire blazing in her eyes. "I'm sorry, I really am. I'm sorry you can't see the new world we're going to raise up out of the Imperium's ashes. The death of the old-" Grimacing, the younger woman hefted her sword one last time, sucking in a breath against the wounds that threatened to bring her to her knees. "-to make way for the new."
The blade came down in a scorching arc of haloed wrath...to be stopped with a bone-shaking clang as the crippled Warmaster reached for the dregs of her strength. A twist of the sword and a touch of a button released the plasma sheath on Elandra's weapon in a crackling blast. Struggling to her knees, Elandra clutched her torn belly, trying to hold her burned insides in and snarled in defiance. "I'm not dead yet, bitch."
Meralth strained, pushing back her legs to step up the staircase by a step. Her blade faltered, the plasma sheath flickering as it gave out, the pair illuminated only by the dimness of the starting sunrise; Zaoth's star peeking above the horizon. "You're stardamned resilient, i'll give that to you."
Meralth spat blood onto the ground beneath her, and pushed her heel into the ground. "This is the end." she spoke. Words that quickly came undone.
Her soul shattered. A wash of dread and damnation peeled across her body as she felt a hungering, gnawing emptiness deep inside her core. Plasma ceased to spark, leaving her alone, without her powers, without anything. The Star was dead. Shattered, yet she knew not why.
Falling down to her knees, Meralth wept. Tears streamed down her face, mixed with the rain from above, and the blood from her injuries. Clattering rang through the night as her blade dropped, falling down the staircase. "No!" she screamed, weeping as her very soul bled out. "Where is the star!?" She was vulnerable, no longer even paying attention to the injured warmaster.
Elandra stepped forth.
Screams of despair rang through the air in time to a renewed burst of explosions as the Dominion assault faltered, their commanders crippled and crying out. At the same time, the defenders took heart, renewing the offensive. Through her garbled comm, Elandra could hear reports of multiple positions being overtaken and even of Dominion forces breaking and fleeing in the sudden chaos. Then she looked down at the weeping woman before her and her lip curled in disgust.
"The Star?" A kick smashed Meralth onto her back and then Elandra bent down and grabbed a fistful of hair and wrenched Meralth's head forward before slamming it back against the marble stairs with a loud crack, yelling as she did so.
"The Star? The Star? The fucking Star?
Crack. Crack. Crack
"It's because of the Star that we're in this mess. Because it gave the power of the gods to mortals, to small minded noble idiots who used it to oppress and subdue and rule."
Triggering the combat stims and sealing modules in her armor, Elandra straightened, grunting as the pain of her injuries faded away temporarily and sealant closed her abdominal wound. Stooping she grabbed Meralth and heaved her up into her arms and lifted the Imperator up in the air.
"Your god is dead and broken, is it? Allow me to send you to join it." With that, she brought Meralth down across her knee and the snap of the Imperator's spine breaking in half was rivaled only by the scream from the woman herself. Tossing Meralth aside like trash, Elandra came on in one last surge of movement. "Give Alhergus my greetings, tell him I'll be there soon."
Click.
"A pity. You lost Taros, and now Zaoth." spoke a voice from the side, down the staircase. With the voice rang footsteps.
Ezekiel.
Elandra turned her head, holding Meralth by the collar of her armor. Seeing the silver-haired Imperator standing there, pistol in hand, put her into shock for but a moment.
A moment was all he needed.
CRACK!
Elandra collapsed atop Meralth, not even being given the chance to scream, to pray, to react. Underneath the body, Meralth groaned in agony, seething through grating teeth as she weakly attempted to push the armored body of the once-warmaster, to no avail. Whinging and groveling, the Imperator shook, still trying to grasp at the lost feeling of the star.
"Ezekiel!" She called out.
No response. The Boy-Imperator stepped above the pair, and grabbed Elandra's corpse by the hair, tugging it up and splaying it across the staircase. Elandra's eyes were dead, left in a permanent state of shock and anger as she stared into the rainy clouds, the sunlight illuminating her skin.
"Worthless bitch. She didn't quite live up to the legend, now did she? I could've done this myself."
He snarled, raising the pistol once more and firing a triplet of rounds into Elandra's face, ripping it to shreds as blood spattered, drooling down the senate's staircase.
"There are Guards coming for you." was the only thing the young Imperator spoke to the weeping Meralth, who laid unmoving in her writhing agony.
With not another noise, he began up the staircase, to the senate.
The doors rumbled as he pushed them open, striding forward into the gap. The hall was silent and shadowed, his boots ringing as he walked across the marble. At last! At long last! The beating heart of the Imperium, within his grasp! Ezekiel smiled, breathing in the air with a heady sort of anticipation as he approached the main hall itself.
A whisper of air moving was all the warning he had. A gleaming halberd swept out of the shadows from behind one of the pillars, missing him by inches as a guard leapt forward, then pulled the weapon back for another swing. The two stared at each other a moment, before Ezekiel raised his gun and fired directly into the visor reflecting his own image back at him. Staggering, the guard made a wordless snarl and lunged, the spike on the halberd taking the Imperator through the shoulder. As he cried out, a rumbling laugh filled the air. "Ave, Imperator. Zaoth is yours. Shame that you won't live to enjoy it."
The halberd was yanked out of his shoulder, and Ezekiel gasped in pain. "That slut of a warmaster couldn't stop me, and neither can you. This is my right, and you-" he concentrated and spindled a small channel of plasma around his other hand. "-are just another worthless stepping stone." A crackling lance of plasma carved through the guard, knocking them back in a spray of molten metal and vaporized flesh.
Laughing, he stepped over the guard and slammed open the last set of doors, triumphant in his victory...only to be faced with a pile of broken rubble at the end of the great hall. The Starlit Throne, seat of the Imperium, a divine sign of the right to rule...reduced to rocks. "NO! NO! NO! NO!" Dimly he became aware that he was screaming the word while slamming the guard against the wall, oblivious to his shoulder or the increasingly wet crunching noises the guard was making as the useless mortal hit the wall again and again.
Focus. Think past the blood. With a grunt, he forced the crazed rage aside and dropped the broken body, bending over and taking several deep breaths. In. And out. In. And out. When the haze receded and the reek of gore and pulped meat no longer consumed his world, he straightened and turn to go back outside the hall. What did it matter that the Throne was gone? He was lord and master, now and forever.
How did the commoners say it? Good to be the king?
Ave Imperator, indeed.
Meralth sighed deeply. Her head fell into her hand as she shook her head, hair put up- a rare sight for the imperator- into a bun as she wore the combat garb of a Marine, repainted white and purple after the Imperium’s colors.
“Keroth, I must go. Elandra cannot go free to fight our troops, lest they die painful deaths. I need to do this.”
“Fight Elandra, on your own!? No! You’ll die before you even see her face!”
“Do not take me for a weakling, Young Imperator. I have seen battle before, and I can take her, be it by word or by hand.”
Meralth fingered the blade at her hip, plasma sparking as she bared her teeth at the silver-haired Imperator in front of her. She stood, and looked towards the door.
“I’m going.”
Ezekiel stood, and slammed his hand onto the desk before him, now yelling.
“You’re an Idiot, Meralth! You’re going to get yourself slaughtered down there! I forbid you to leave this ve-”
He was cut off as she spoke calmly, holding her hand up as the other grabbed the doorknob.
“Save your words for when I return, Young Imperator. Tonight, Elandra will either surrender or die.”
She paused and opened the door, and she spoke one last time, a searing pain at the edges of her voice.
“And with her, so too shall Zaoth.”
Ezekiel frowned, and Meralth left. She pitied the fool who bothered the boy now; he’s sure to fly into a rage as soon as she leaves.
Planetside - Landing Zone
The drop to the planet was rough, storm clouds roiling around the ship and gunfire resounding around them. Planes fought like birds of prey in the skies, making passes at one another and going down, down, down; crashing to the surface as a meteor of flame, and exploding. Artillery shot into the sky, arching back down with fireballs of explosion, and Imperial hovertanks lobbed plasma across streets and into targets. It was a painful sight for Meralth, to see what was once her home wrought by destruction by her Dominion’s hand.
Then the dropship landed, and she was ripped from her wayward train of thought. Metal boots clacked as soldiers, warily stepped off the dropship, each offering her a salute as they passed, hope in their eyes to see their Imperator on the field with them. She, too, stepped into the storm.
“Imperator, what are you doing here!?” called out an officer, walking up to Meralth as she walked from the dropship, her helmet pattered with stormy rain in the dark night of zaothm darkness and water engulfing them as thunder and gunfire sounded in the distance. Her response to the officer was drowned out by an explosion, and she had to repeat herself with a yell.
“I Come here to find the Warmaster! Do not stand in my path!”
She stepped past the officer, who saluted and nodded, stepping aside and letting her pass. She crossed through the frontline, closing her helmet to protect from the chilling storm. The night was lit up by distant gunfire, Meralth’s walk turning into a sprint as she followed a positioning system in her helm’s display, turning down sidestreets and crossing roads while gunfire was low, nearly being hit by a stray sniper’s bolt on numerous occasions. Heavy breaths found way from her needing lungs as she slowed to a quiet walk, her boot’s clack against stone drowned by the rain and thunder.
The Senate building stood before her.
“Now or never.” she told herself, sucking in a deep breath and laying hand on her blade, pulling it from its sheath with the distant shink of metal on metal. The blade was straight and made of a polished metal, gleaning silver in the moonlight. With a click of her button, plasma formed around its blade, rain pittering against it sizzling into hot steam as the purple glow provided a soft light around her. The handle was white leather, matching the pale purple of plasma and the same colors inlaid into her armor. Her grip tightened.
Meralth placed her foot out of the alley, and walked forwards, lifting her helmet away to take a good look at the senate, as she took the first step upon the staircase. Would she die here? No. She had to do this. She had to survive in the name of the Realm.
May the Dimming Star and the Waning Shadow bless her.
Zaoth, Imperial Defense Command, Forty minutes prior
"Get this over to the Eighteenth! They're to fall back against the hill while the courtyard divisions give counterbattery fire!" Elandra shoved the datapad into the courier's hands, who saluted and then took off. Jamming efforts and nuclear detonations in the atmosphere over the last week and more of fighting had ruined communications for both sides, while CONA fleet elements encroached at the edge of the system and gave a desperate sense of urgency to the fighting.
The door slammed open in time to a rolling boom of thunder and another courier shoved her way inside, shaking off rainwater before pulling out a dispatch. "Warmaster! The upper districts are breached, they're pushing on the Senate. The -" the courier hesitated briefly before continuing. "The defensive line is breaking. We can't raise the Imperator and his Legion was last seen in retreat from the Arneth Gate."
Elandra grunted and turned aside to sort through another pile of dispatches. "Let them. We've got mortars arrayed on the surrounding spires. We'll turn it into a charnel house and drive them back down into the mercantile districts."
At those words, the other woman went pale and clutched at her breastplate, babbling desperately. "N-no! You can't! You can't let them take the Senate! The Imperator-”
The Warmaster frowned. "The Imperator? I thought you said the 819th was in retreat and nobody had seen Gaos since Arneth was nuked. Who are you talking about?"
The courier sagged. "There was a last-minute shuttle from the orbital rings. It was packed with survivors from the nurseries, but they got shot down. Imperator Gaos did get a message through, commanding the survivors be rescued and safeguarded at all costs."
Another frown and a weary sigh. What could possibly justify this? More to the point, why wasn't the damn courier spitting out whatever the issue was...her train of thought trailed off abruptly as she remembered the first part of the message. The nurseries. Survivors. "Dammit!" She spat, jerking to her feet and shoving papers and pads aside. "Get the cohort ready to move."
---
Another crash of thunder. The weather had never been pastoral on Zaoth, situated as it was near the edge of the habitable zone and yet bleeding enormous amounts of heat into the atmosphere from its industry, but in the last year it had been truly awful. Nonstop storm winds and almost monthly hurricanes and typhoons. Slamming through the colossal Senate doors and wiping water from her face as the Legionnaires slammed them shut again behind her, Elandra glowered out at the storm and battle-wracked skies. The common folk had whispered that the increased storms and foul weather were the wrath of the Star, wreaking vengeance for the sins of the Houses and after all of this, she couldn't say that she disagreed, not really. Not to say a more substantial sign of divine displeasure wouldn't have been a welcome gesture to help steer the Houses back into line. Whimpering and sniffles from further inside the hall drew her attention away and the scowl faded.
Speaking of the Houses, it was time to figure out how to save the last remnants of them. If saved they could be, that is. Pushing her way through the last set of doors and into the main hall, she paused, looking over the small group of children clustered around the steps leading up to the Throne. There couldn't have been more than fifty of them, but they were all that was left. The Dominion had been hunting the adults of the Houses with an unholy fervor, binding them in chains or slaughtering them and making trophies from their corpses and now...
She sighed again, a dark and bitter cold spreading in her bones. And now she had to get them to safety. Or rather, buy them time. Another crash shook the Senate, and her eyes flicked up to the roof. That one hadn't been thunder. They were closing in, and she at least was out of time. A gesture brought the captain of the Senate guard over, and she clapped a gauntleted hand on his shoulder. "Time's up. Get them changed, slave garb if you have it. Then take them out the back entrances and go to ground. You won't be able to get offworld just yet, but keep an eye out, and run for it as soon as you can."
"Milor-" She slapped him, the crack of metal against flesh stark and loud in the quasi-silence of the hall. "That was an order, you imbecile. Those children are the Realm, and you and your men are going to defend them with your lives."
"But what about you? Surely you're coming too?"
She gave him her best 'idiot' glare before he backed down, eyes wide. "I" she enunciated, "am going to go out there and get myself killed like a Starbedamned moron to buy you time. If you waste that time, I am going to come back from death to gut you myself. Now get those brats out of here. And maybe see about raising them to be decent people while you're at it."
Striding away to gather her men one last time, she paused and looked up at the Throne. "Actually, Captain, if you would lend me your axe briefly?"
Several very satisfying minutes later, she locked her helmet in place and led her men out into the rain and the thunder. As the great doors swung open, she narrowed her eyes inside her helmet at the figure waiting for her on the steps.
Well then. A flick and a nonverbal helmet comm dispersed her squad to help with the rest of the fighting as she pulled her twin swords from her hips and walked down to meet the usurper, holding them lightly at her side.
"You know, your greatsire always said it would come to this again one day. A Vos and a Vakorian, locked in battle for the Throne and Realm alike. Not sure he would've seen this coming, though."
One last glance upward just as a fighter came streaking out of the sky and ripped into the side of a spire. And then she lit her blades with a crackle and a snap of plasma as the sky blazed with fire and the crumbling spire rained debris down around them. "So let's have it then. Stand and fight. Fight for the crown, fight for power, fight because you're too fucking stubborn to see where this ends." She took a breath and continued, the echo of this woman's ancestor's words ringing in her ears. "Fight because Zaoth burns and Ragnarok is here at last."
Meralth faltered for but a moment. A step she didnt take, looking up towards Elandra. This is it, the fight for the Realm.
"Surrender, Warmaster! You know I don't want to fight you!"
She growled and lifted her blade, slicing through the rain with a hiss of sizzling steam. The purple light shone in the darkness like a beacon of hatred and yet, hope. Swiveling and turning, the blade-point found itself aimed right at the Warmaster, Meralth's grimace still ever present as she called out through the misty night, hoping to bring Elandra to her senses.
"Fight me now, and Die. Surrender, and Live. I can guarantee you that much. The Realm may be burning around us, but you don't have to!" Meralth hissed, her words nearly drowned out as a craft streaked overhead, crashing down like a fireball into the streets below- accompanied by screams.
Elandra lunged, swinging with her blades as Meralth pulled her sword around to parry, the shock of metal-to-metal bringing a sore ache upon her, although it was nothing she'd not experienced before. The plasma sizzled, and crackled against itself, bursting in the rain like hot oil left too long on a stovetop, ready to burn into ash. They pushed blade into blade, both sneering and baring their teeth as thunder sounded off in the distance.
"This doom is given to me and is mine alone. This fate I cannot forefend." replied Elandra, eyes shimmering in the purple light of their blades.
Elandra broke the bladelock with a twist and followed up with a kick that sent Meralth stumbling down several steps. Bringing her blades back up to a ready position, she spat at the Imperator.
"Are you satisfied, girl? Look around you!" A gesture of her right sword encompassed the ruin and death ongoing around them. "You've come home at last, to be sure. And you brought that bloodthirsty mongrel with you. Do you see the battle-hunger in his eyes, I wonder? How long before the oh-so-noble Imperator Ezekiel begins to hunger for more power and acclaim? How long until the thought of sharing the little scraps of power he does with you are a raw, aching wound to him?"
An enraged howl was her only answer as Meralth charged up the steps and the two women traded blows again in a flurry of steel and crackling plasma.
Meralth swung the blade wide as they clashed again, steel crashing against steel. With a swipe, she kicked out Elandra's feet and slashed through the warlord's cheek with the searing tip of her plasma blade, panting as she turned her head towards the Warlord once again.
"No, Vos! The Boy will find his way in time, I'm sure of it! He must find a way to control the dreft-blood that courses through him. The Dominion.." she paused, doubt in her voice. "The Dominion will surpass all that the Imperium Achieved! I must have faith in him, lest he grow worse!"
Elandra stood, growling as she pulled her blades up once again, the wound of a blade burned into her cheek.
"Tell me, Meralth. Where do you think the cycle ends!? Because I tell you, as sure as the sunrise that it will not end here. Not if you and that boy of yours march before the Throne as conquerors! Power's addictive, and once your people get a taste of it, they'll want more. Mine did!"
Meralth recoiled as the warlord charged her, blade meeting blade again as they clashed in the rainy night.
"I won't let them!" she cried, wincing as she poured all her strength into fighting back against the mental and physical assault that Elandra had shoved her into. "We aren't like you!"
A mocking sneer as the Warmaster leveraged her higher positioning to force Meralth's blade slowly back. "Maybe you won't," she purred, poison dripping from her words, "but he will. I've been watching him, this whole war. He's tasted blood and he's starving for more, I can see it in his eyes. You and I both know how that ends."
"You're wrong, you have to be!" A desperate shove and a shoulderbash that knocked Elandra from her feet, sending her toppling down the stairs. Still shouting denials, Meralth rained blows down on her with blade and fist and armored boot. Coughing and spitting blood, Elandra pulled one of her swords back and delivered a slash across Meralth's inner left thigh, prompting a scream of agony. Grabbing her foot, the Imperial twisted with a ringing snap, prompting another wounded shriek. Tossing the impudent girl back, she pushed herself to her feet with a pained whine and then spat a mouthful of blood as she retreated up several steps, panting and gritting her teeth against the fiery pain of multiple broken ribs.
"Let's not make liars of each other, not here and now. You can see it, just like me. I have to wonder, are you denying it so fiercely because you think I'm actually wrong...or because you can't bear for me to be right?"
Meralth gasped in pain, stumbling to limp on her broken foot as she sucked in gulps of air. Ripping off her helmet, she tossed it to the side, her eyes glowing with a sad mixture of fear and rage.
"No. No.. No!" She cried, pain tingling at the edges of her voice as the wounded two charged one another.
"You only deny the inevitable, Girl! You're blind to the horrors that boy creates. He's no better than any Imperial!" yelled Elandra as the blades struck one another once more, the clash ending quickly as each recoiled backwards.
They crashed into one another again, blades locked as Meralth was pushed back, silent in her painful and enraged grimace, too silent-
A shock of agony rippled through Elandra as she gasped, burning of plasma as Meralth's hand buried deep in the warmaster's stomach, plasma crackling like torn wires as blood gushed.
"It's over."
"Ngghhhh" Elandra shuddered, the motion causing ripples of searing pain to wrack her insides. Panting through gritted teeth, Meralth twisted her hand then ripped it out while lashing her sword across Elandra's chest.
Pain, white-hot and paralyzing, ate her world from the inside out as she crumpled and slid down the now charred and blood-slick stairs. Limping, Meralth came down to meet her, a fire blazing in her eyes. "I'm sorry, I really am. I'm sorry you can't see the new world we're going to raise up out of the Imperium's ashes. The death of the old-" Grimacing, the younger woman hefted her sword one last time, sucking in a breath against the wounds that threatened to bring her to her knees. "-to make way for the new."
The blade came down in a scorching arc of haloed wrath...to be stopped with a bone-shaking clang as the crippled Warmaster reached for the dregs of her strength. A twist of the sword and a touch of a button released the plasma sheath on Elandra's weapon in a crackling blast. Struggling to her knees, Elandra clutched her torn belly, trying to hold her burned insides in and snarled in defiance. "I'm not dead yet, bitch."
Meralth strained, pushing back her legs to step up the staircase by a step. Her blade faltered, the plasma sheath flickering as it gave out, the pair illuminated only by the dimness of the starting sunrise; Zaoth's star peeking above the horizon. "You're stardamned resilient, i'll give that to you."
Meralth spat blood onto the ground beneath her, and pushed her heel into the ground. "This is the end." she spoke. Words that quickly came undone.
Her soul shattered. A wash of dread and damnation peeled across her body as she felt a hungering, gnawing emptiness deep inside her core. Plasma ceased to spark, leaving her alone, without her powers, without anything. The Star was dead. Shattered, yet she knew not why.
Falling down to her knees, Meralth wept. Tears streamed down her face, mixed with the rain from above, and the blood from her injuries. Clattering rang through the night as her blade dropped, falling down the staircase. "No!" she screamed, weeping as her very soul bled out. "Where is the star!?" She was vulnerable, no longer even paying attention to the injured warmaster.
Elandra stepped forth.
Screams of despair rang through the air in time to a renewed burst of explosions as the Dominion assault faltered, their commanders crippled and crying out. At the same time, the defenders took heart, renewing the offensive. Through her garbled comm, Elandra could hear reports of multiple positions being overtaken and even of Dominion forces breaking and fleeing in the sudden chaos. Then she looked down at the weeping woman before her and her lip curled in disgust.
"The Star?" A kick smashed Meralth onto her back and then Elandra bent down and grabbed a fistful of hair and wrenched Meralth's head forward before slamming it back against the marble stairs with a loud crack, yelling as she did so.
"The Star? The Star? The fucking Star?
Crack. Crack. Crack
"It's because of the Star that we're in this mess. Because it gave the power of the gods to mortals, to small minded noble idiots who used it to oppress and subdue and rule."
Triggering the combat stims and sealing modules in her armor, Elandra straightened, grunting as the pain of her injuries faded away temporarily and sealant closed her abdominal wound. Stooping she grabbed Meralth and heaved her up into her arms and lifted the Imperator up in the air.
"Your god is dead and broken, is it? Allow me to send you to join it." With that, she brought Meralth down across her knee and the snap of the Imperator's spine breaking in half was rivaled only by the scream from the woman herself. Tossing Meralth aside like trash, Elandra came on in one last surge of movement. "Give Alhergus my greetings, tell him I'll be there soon."
Click.
"A pity. You lost Taros, and now Zaoth." spoke a voice from the side, down the staircase. With the voice rang footsteps.
Ezekiel.
Elandra turned her head, holding Meralth by the collar of her armor. Seeing the silver-haired Imperator standing there, pistol in hand, put her into shock for but a moment.
A moment was all he needed.
CRACK!
Elandra collapsed atop Meralth, not even being given the chance to scream, to pray, to react. Underneath the body, Meralth groaned in agony, seething through grating teeth as she weakly attempted to push the armored body of the once-warmaster, to no avail. Whinging and groveling, the Imperator shook, still trying to grasp at the lost feeling of the star.
"Ezekiel!" She called out.
No response. The Boy-Imperator stepped above the pair, and grabbed Elandra's corpse by the hair, tugging it up and splaying it across the staircase. Elandra's eyes were dead, left in a permanent state of shock and anger as she stared into the rainy clouds, the sunlight illuminating her skin.
"Worthless bitch. She didn't quite live up to the legend, now did she? I could've done this myself."
He snarled, raising the pistol once more and firing a triplet of rounds into Elandra's face, ripping it to shreds as blood spattered, drooling down the senate's staircase.
"There are Guards coming for you." was the only thing the young Imperator spoke to the weeping Meralth, who laid unmoving in her writhing agony.
With not another noise, he began up the staircase, to the senate.
The doors rumbled as he pushed them open, striding forward into the gap. The hall was silent and shadowed, his boots ringing as he walked across the marble. At last! At long last! The beating heart of the Imperium, within his grasp! Ezekiel smiled, breathing in the air with a heady sort of anticipation as he approached the main hall itself.
A whisper of air moving was all the warning he had. A gleaming halberd swept out of the shadows from behind one of the pillars, missing him by inches as a guard leapt forward, then pulled the weapon back for another swing. The two stared at each other a moment, before Ezekiel raised his gun and fired directly into the visor reflecting his own image back at him. Staggering, the guard made a wordless snarl and lunged, the spike on the halberd taking the Imperator through the shoulder. As he cried out, a rumbling laugh filled the air. "Ave, Imperator. Zaoth is yours. Shame that you won't live to enjoy it."
The halberd was yanked out of his shoulder, and Ezekiel gasped in pain. "That slut of a warmaster couldn't stop me, and neither can you. This is my right, and you-" he concentrated and spindled a small channel of plasma around his other hand. "-are just another worthless stepping stone." A crackling lance of plasma carved through the guard, knocking them back in a spray of molten metal and vaporized flesh.
Laughing, he stepped over the guard and slammed open the last set of doors, triumphant in his victory...only to be faced with a pile of broken rubble at the end of the great hall. The Starlit Throne, seat of the Imperium, a divine sign of the right to rule...reduced to rocks. "NO! NO! NO! NO!" Dimly he became aware that he was screaming the word while slamming the guard against the wall, oblivious to his shoulder or the increasingly wet crunching noises the guard was making as the useless mortal hit the wall again and again.
Focus. Think past the blood. With a grunt, he forced the crazed rage aside and dropped the broken body, bending over and taking several deep breaths. In. And out. In. And out. When the haze receded and the reek of gore and pulped meat no longer consumed his world, he straightened and turn to go back outside the hall. What did it matter that the Throne was gone? He was lord and master, now and forever.
How did the commoners say it? Good to be the king?
Ave Imperator, indeed.