#excommunicate traitoris

(Send “House + a Character’s Name” and I’ll create a GoT style banner for them using this generator.)

Weaponmaster: Horus / Sisters of Silence / Legio Custodes / Ra Endymion

Commander Krole: *vague hand gestures*

Melpomanei: “A metaphorical bent. Very well then…”

Commander Krole: *hand gestures*

Melpomanei: “Accursèd Horus is a weapon proved flawed at his conception now that he has dealt treacherous wounds to the hand that wields.”

Commander Krole: *hand gestures*

Melpomanei: “The Silent Sisterhood are a weapon I wield in His name. They have proved themselves an instrument of surgical precision on many occasions, and of utter annihilation on a few.”

Commander Krole: *hand gestures*

Melpomanei: “The Ten Thousand, Tribune Ra Endymion included, are weapons of singular quality, the Emperor’s will made flesh. I would never presume to wield them, but am honoured to have had many of them agree to follow my advice on the battlefield.”

@ask-tribune-ra

A Fool’s Hope

[A Fool’s Hope on AO3] [My works on AO3]

I died here, thought the cyclops as the ash of his thrice-burned homeworld trickled through scarred fingers. Unarmoured and unclothed, every inch of his crimson skin was carven with wards and sigils that stirred echoes of a memory that was and was not his own. He knelt in the centre of a summoning circle, a silver Paladin at each of the cardinal points. One from each Brotherhood of the Grey Knights, they had passed their last trial with distinction - when tasked with banishing one of the six hundred and sixty-six most powerful daemons, they had taken it upon themselves to seek out one of the hundred and one daemons of the Conclave Diabolus. Today would be their greatest test.  Beyond the edge of the circle stood another figure in silver armour. Though smaller and slighter, she was far more intimidating. Where the Paladins acted as conduits for the empyric energy that blew across Prospero’s blasted surface, earthing it into the summoning circle through their planted Nemesis force swords, Jenetia Krole consumed it, drawing it in as a black hole swallowed light.  The last errant shard of Magnus the Red lifted his single eye to the heavens. He studied the tides that ebbed and flowed from the sickly bright scar across reality. He watched the waves batter the beacon of the Astronomican on disant Terra, desperate to smother it again. He turned his eye, at last, to Sortiarius. Crowned by damnation, Prospero’s dark twin had been drawn into reality by a single, shining strand of fate that tethered its Obsidian Tower to the place where once stood the Pyramid of Photep.  “It is time,” said Ianius in his bipartite voice. The stars were right.  Power drawn from the Great Rift flowed through the Paladins into the summoning circle, and into the being that was and was not Magnus. The strand snapped. The Paladins were hurled from their feet, smoke coiling from between the plates of blackened armour to join the cloud of dust thrown up by the impact. Krole didn’t even blink as the psychic blast wave passed her by like a gentle breeze. She stepped into the circle, aetheric currents parting in a bow wave before her.  In the centre of the circle, Ianius remained standing as convulsions wracked his body. When he opened his eye, it writhed with flames in innumerable shades of the colour of magick. He spoke now with one voice. The voice of Magnus the Red. “Jenetia. I confess I am surprised. I always thought it would be Leman, in the end.”  Yet here we are. It hurt Magnus’ eye to look at the gestures she made, their meaning searing into his mind through the medium of pain as much as sight. He forced himself to smile.  “Yet here we are, where it all began.”  Not quite.  Magnus looked up to the sky and saw the glimmer of a new, spectral strand. A future that might yet come to be. It led him to the Astronomican. “Of course,” he sighed. “Yes, I see it now.”  You see, but do you understand?  He did. He sensed the hope that Ianius had harboured in this scheme. He cast it aside. Once before he had sold his soul for hope. Never again. “The galaxy is burning,” he said. An old oath fulfilled. “Let it be my pyre.”  The Crimson King knelt before the Soulless Queen, and bared his neck for the execution blade. For destruction? For rebirth? He didn’t care anymore.

Across the galaxy, Navigators wept in awestruck wonder as the Astronomican flared with a pulse of light that, for a brief moment, could be glimpsed through the darkest storm.

(Send me ‘✂’ and my muse will kill yours. Right now. Brutally, horribly, bloody. Just do it.)

Suffering Silence

[Suffering Silence on AO3] [My works on AO3]

The silence bled into every sense. The hateful creatures in silver armour should have shone brightly in the light of fire, explosions, and powered blades, but instead they seemed to leech the very colour from the world. Fulgrim eviscerated two of the Oblivion Knights with a single swing, his piercing shriek blunted by their presence. Even the taste of victory was insipid on his tongue. Their silence offended Slaanesh.  The daemon-primarch’s four blades moved faster than should have been possible, keeping the remaining eight knights and their dread commander at bay. Even still, Fulgrim felt sluggish as their convergent null auras strangled the flow of empyrean power. He should have been faster. That his enemy were able to parry even a single blow was a grievous wound to his martial pride.  From the corner of his eye, he saw an Oblivion Knight raise her execution blade. It was instantly obvious she would not be able to either land the blow or bring the blade down for a parry before Fulgrim struck. She died for her imperfection. Too late, Fulgrim realised he had made an error of his own.  One arm burned with a pain somehow devoid of sensation. He looked at the stump with disbelief and rage.Tendrils of half-corporeal matter tried to rise up out of the stream of purpure ichor to reform the hand, but the process was stymied by the Silent Sisters. Fulgrim’s serpentine tail whipped out, knocking three knights aside to free a blade for the one who had dared mar his beauty. Across ten millennia and the breadth of a galaxy filled with xenos horrors and the madness of the warp, she was the most disgusting thing Fulgrim had ever beheld. Jenetia Krole was so abhorrent to his senses that she seemed to disappear entirely whenever his focus strayed even slightly.  Veracity, still wet with daemonic ichor, parried easily. It had been a clumsy strike, and Fulgrim knew it. It was indignant, impulsive. That was his second mistake. Krole held the giant blade one-handed, her other raising Sinistra and putting a salvo of nitidus rounds into Fulgrim’s screaming face. The archaeotech rounds exploded in a flash of light.  Fulgrim writhed, his tail and three remaining blades swinging wildly. The nitidus rounds would have blinded any opponent, but for him - a creature of Chaos as much as flesh - the psychic vacuum they produced plunged him into his darkest nightmare. A world without sensation.  Krole ducked and weaved through the flailing limbs. Sinistra was back in its holster, both hands on the Sword of Oblivion. The survivors of the Raptor Guard stabbed their execution blades into Fulgrim’s lashing tail and clashed their blades against his whenever they came in reach, whether or not they posed a threat.  It lasted only handful of seconds. In a face of horrific beauty now pockmarked by smoking craters and dripping with ichor, Fulgrim’s iridescent violet eyes opened to see Krole mid-leap, Veracity - his false father’s sword - arcing towards his neck. He tried to bring his blade up, but he was too slow.  Krole lifted the fallen head by lank, off-white hair. In the grip of the daemon-primarch’s soporific musk, many had professed him the most beautiful thing they had ever seen. The very image of perfection. Free of a soul’s lies, Krole saw only the sallow, sunken features of an addict who had sold himself to darkness in a vain attempt to make the ephemeral eternal. Her lips curled in disgust, and she cast it aside. The task was not yet done. It was not enough merely to send such foulness back to the empyrean.  She set about carving the marks that would unmake his quintessence. Unheard, Fulgrim’s ravaged soul screamed its last as the abyss of eternal silence claimed him.

The Queen Conquers

[The Queen Conquers on AO3] [My works on AO3]

“What hit us?” Lotara Sarrin shouted over the blaring sirens on the bridge of the Conqueror. The ship shook with another impact. It felt like a close range broadside, which should have been impossible - even with the Conqueror at the vanguard of Horus’ invasion fleet, an enemy vessel would have to slip through hundreds of overlapping sensor scans to ambush them.  “I’m… not sure, Captain.” Sarrin could hear the frown in the deck officer’s voice. “Hang on, picking up a signal. It’s faint, probably some kind of stealth ship. Wait, no - that’s impossible…”  “Tell me,” Sarrin snapped.  “According to the scans, the vessel is of battleship tonnage. Nothing that size should be able to sneak up on us like this.”  Sarrin brought up the scan data, eyes wide with shock. “Oh no,” she whispered. Then she shouted. “Get Delvarus up here, now!”  “Captain?”  “It’s the bloody Serenitatis.” Sarrin drew her laspistol.  “We’ve lost voids!”  No sooner had the officer made the report than a flash of light filled the bridge. Sarrin fired off three shots before the armoured figures resolved themselves. The shots glanced harmlessly off silver plate decorated with the eagles and thunderbolts of the Emperor’s personal heraldry. The mere presence of the Silent Sisters sent a wave of terror across the bridge. Men and women that had spent their lives at war erupted into panic as they were put to the sword.  Sarrin barely noticed them. Her eyes were fixed on their leader as she advanced on the command throne with slow, deliberate paces. Sarrin felt her hand shake as she raised her pistol again. The shot should have gone through the red aquila tattoo on the Silent Sister’s forehead, but somehow she wasn’t quite where she appeared to be. Another step, and the pistol fell from Sarrin’s nerveless fingers as her heart skipped a beat.  “Commander Krole,” she forced the words out through gritted teeth. A last gesture of defiance. “It’s an honour.”  The Knight-Commander of the Silent Sisterhood didn’t react. There was no hatred or malice in her eyes as she raised her vast, two-handed blade over her head. There was nothing at all.  The Sword of Oblivion descended, and Lotara Sarrin’s head fell from her shoulders, leaving a trail of bright scarlet as it rolled away from the throne. Krole paused only to wipe her blade on the flag captain’s once-white uniform, obliterating the last trace of the bloody handprint that had stood out so prominently only moments ago, before turning to survey the charnel house her Raptor Guard had made of the bridge.  A nod was enough to deliver her order. Find the Twelfth.

Damnatio Memoriae

[Damnatio Memoriae on AO3] [My works on AO3]

The Emperor fell, and Jenetia Krole almost screamed. The twisted face of Horus Lupercal leered over Him, cast in hellish crimson light from the gorget of his black terminator plate. Horus had won.  Vengeance. The purity of this single thought consumed Jenetia. Unseen at Horus’ back, she brought Veracity up. The Arch-Traitor revelled in his victory. She would have only a single strike. It had to be perfect. Into that strike she poured her grief, and her rage, and her silence. It was a blow to murder gods.  The Emperor saw her blade - once His own - upraised. He mustered all His will and unleashed it through Asaruludu. Swords of Light and Oblivion met as they pierced Horus’ hearts like twin shards of ice and fire.  Nothing and everything surged through Horus, two opposing forces impossibly alloyed by the will to annihilate him. The things that fancied themselves gods cowered before the power of the paradox, and Chaos itself fled in terror.  “Please,” Horus gasped.  If it was a prayer, there were no gods left to hear him. If he were begging for mercy, he would find Jenetia had none left in her. Not for him. Not for anyone. That there was sorrow in the Emperor’s eyes surprised her, but He, too, did not waver.  Horus Lupercal was unmade. He was already forgotten as his lifeless, soulless corpse fell to the deck. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. The Emperor of Mankind had fallen. Jenetia fell to her knees by her father’s side and wept.