Holding out a hand, I blasted my assailant back with a glowing fireball. The legionary bellowed in agony as he writhed, the flames scorching his gray plate a deep black. Clenching my fist, I then crushed him inside his power armor. Even his augmented physiology was no match for cermaite that compressed his body from all sides.
As his corpse toppled over, I turned to the next Wolf. The feral barbarians had come to our world to raze it, but while I stood, I would not allow a single one of them to destroy the precious stores of knowledge and lore in Tizca.
Even as Prospero burned around me, I stood defiant. Fire ignited within my gauntlet and I bathed the next assailant in a superheated inferno akin to that of plasma. He howled, his voice almost bestial, as he fell to his knees, his chainaxe falling to the ground.
Yet, even as I incinerated him, more of his brethren marched forward, a sea of glacial gray and leather. A violent tide of death and destruction that had already consumed most of the beleaguered Spireguard.
Closing my eyes, I reached out with my mind. Behind me, thunderous footfalls sent tremors throughout the earth. Delving into my psionic link with my charges, I coaxed them forward. A squadron of Castellax-Achea patterned battle-automata burst out of the gloom, their aetherfire cannons already glowing hot.
Arcane plasma streamed out of their barrels, swallowing large swathes of legionaries in boiling clouds. Three Fenris born legionaries simply ceased to exist, their forms disintegrated instantly by the sheer heat. Their brothers were not so fortunate.
With half of their bodies seared away or dissolved into molten ceramite and flesh, they screamed in agony - a sound I never thought a legionary was capable of making. Despite their horrendous injuries, I could see what remained of them struggle to claw their way toward me, defiant. None of them made it past a meter before they expired, even their transhuman physiology unable to save them from such horrific damage.
I felt no remorse or pity for the invaders. Aetheric lightning crackled between my fingers before I unleashed the deadly torrents into their ranks. To my surprise, the electricity collided against an invisible wall.
A single ancient legionary stepped out, clad in even more pelts and leather than his brethren. Fetishes and tokens clung to a band around his neck, and he held a totemic staff that glowed dimly. Hoarfrost spread across from him, chilling the esoteric flames that I had conjured.
"Warlock," he hissed venomously. I regarded him for a moment, remembering the title the Vlka Fenryka bestowed upon such members of their brutal legion.
"Priest."
"You dare defy the Edict of Nikaea? You spit on the oaths of the Emperor?"
"It is you who betray the Emperor, turning upon your brother legions like this," I replied evenly. The priest shook his head in disgust.
"You may twist rhetoric to your favor, witch, but we are no traitors. We have been dispatched here by the Emperor Himself."
"The Emperor would never order our destruction."
"Believe what you want," the priest sneered. "But the moment you delved into warpcraft and powers banned to us, you have already condemned yourselves."
My lip curled at his hypocrisy. "So, when we conduct research on the warp, it is considered treachery. But what of you, priest, who dabbles in the same thing? You claim we break the Edict of Nikaea, but you continue your shamanic ways and drawing power from the Empyrean, disregarding the Emperor's instructions on superstition and rituals."
The priest's eyes narrowed. "I have no intention to waste my time on a pointless debate. My lord has decreed that Prospero burns...and so it shall."
A howling blizzard of frost surged toward me, but a superheated torrent of plasma from one of my Castellax-Achea automata burns through it, rendering it to boiling mist. Some of the plasma continued onward, splattering against a tactical squad. Though the priest threw up another barrier to protect himself, the legionaries around him fell, their power armor molten and bubbling.
A Contemptor Dreadnought, garbed in the gray of the legion of Fenris, barged its way forward. Its atomantic shielding shimmered brightly as it deflected the streams of plasma fired by the automata. Its fist collided against the front robot, smashing it aside like a wrecking ball carried by a servitor. Its other arm, a gravis lascannon, swiveled about to fire pointblank into a second automaton, whose armor plating buckled from the twin ruby beams.
The rest of the automata piled onto the Contemptor Dreadnought, but it swatted them aside, its fist brutally crushing the crystalline psi-matrices that decorated their heads. Their achean-force claws left little marks on its venerable armor, mostly superficial scars that did not reach to the crippled legionary held in ambiotic suspension within the walking coffin.
"Contemptor Dreadnoughts are really overpowered this edition," I grumbled. "And yet they have the nerve to nerf my Castellax-achea automata."
"I have no idea what you are blaspheming about, but none of you shall leave the surface of Prospero alive!" The Priest growled as he whipped up another howling wind of frost. I had never visited Fenris before, but I was under the impression that he was terraforming this part of the city into a location reminiscent of his homeworld.
While throwing up a kine barrier to deflect his storm, I turned to my struggling automata, mentally commanding them to withdrew. Several of them had been damaged badly by the Contemptor Dreadnought, and a couple no longer responded to my mental instructions.
Worse, the venerable ancient housed within had turned his attention to me, the optic lenses of the Contemptor Dreadnought's helm glowing a murderous red. The twin barrels of the lascannon pointed toward me, and I was unable to erect a second barrier for I was currently fending off the blizzard from the priest.
This was bad.
Fortunately, before the Contemptor Dreadnought could fire, blazing arcs of plasma slammed into it from behind. Both my would-be killer and I turned around, catching sight of a support squad sprinting into cover. Raising their aetherfire blasters - a specially modified plasma gun that relied more on our psychic abilities than Martian technology - they sent streams of superheated energy into the chassis. The atomantic shielding held for several seconds before flickering out, leaving the ancient exposed to arcane plasma. Several simply scorched the surface, but a few found their mark, rupturing the plasma generator within.
Whatever powered the atomantic shielding blew up with enough violence to send a nearby building toppling over.
"Blasphemy," the priest hissed, his rage fuelling his powers. "Not only do you dabble in forbidden sorcery, you bring proscribed technology to the fore? How much lower can you sink to?"
I would have retorted, but I didn't have to. So furious was the priest that he did not notice the dark shadow that had befallen our position. A melta blast erupted from a massive weapon that could only be fitted onto a superheavy, shattering his kine barrier and vaporizing the bearded warrior. My optics blinked out, filtering the bright, actinic flare, but when my vision returned, I saw that there was nothing left of my foe but a molten crater.
"Thank you," I breathed into my vox-grille. The pilot of the black and gold Imperial Knight suit that had lumbered into the vicinity, responded with a click.
"No problem."
We were fortunate to have the Knights of House Yato on our side. They had suffered heavy losses against the Titans of Legio Mortis and the accompanying House Malinax, but they continued to fight stoically, as their honor demanded.
"Prospero will survive," I murmured, wiping the ash from my once bright crimson armor. Even in the devastation, the script written into the golden trim of my Cataphractii pattern tactical dreadnought armor glowed defiantly. "We will drive these invaders off our world."
As if in accordance to my will, the surviving Castellax-achea automata picked themselves up to get into formation. The sergeant of the plasma support squad shouted something, probably asking for orders. I nodded and pointed toward the distance where a squadron of Land Raiders, decked out in the gray heraldry of the Wolves of Fenris, advanced toward the city square. They were escorted by the grey silhouettes of the Knights of House Malinax.
Already, I could feel the aggression rolling off from the knight pilot as he braced his Errant-patterned armor for the battle ahead. Smiling, I raised a gauntlet.
"We'll support your charge, Sir Tanaka."
"You have my thanks."
Taking a deep breath, I drew upon the energies from the Empyrean and plunged into battle once more.
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