Willpower
Willpower
"Khayon," Abaddon said. ". ‘I underestimated your loyalty to the daemon. I apologise for that. You know I mean you no harm. Not to you, your brothers, or your familiar."
Khayon appears to calm down a bit from hearing Abaddon's voice.
"Such a temper." Abaddon forced a smile.
Khayon turns to the group. "Forgive me, brothers."
Deathraven flexes the fingers of his power fist, allowing it to return to it's unpowered state.The look on his face says that he wants to kill Khayon, but his posture slowly relaxes to a neutral state.
Sargon lead the group to another chamber where you saw the daemon wolf and it appeared to be sleeping. Around it were jagged Colchisian runes which appeared to put the daemon in it's current state. Khayon walked over to the wolf and covered one of the runes with his boot and the wolf instantly jumped up baring it's fangs at Sargon. The wolf walked over to Khayons side.
"Is all well?" Abaddon asked.
"All is well," Khayon replied.
"Good. If you are willing, I’d ask a favour of you, Khayon."
All of you turned to him at those unexpected words. ‘Ask.’
He gave a rueful smile, one of a jest shared between brothers. "Take me back to the Taloc with you. It’s been too long since I spoke with Falkus."
Telemachon and Lheor also stay aboard the Vengful Spirit with Sargon.
"Beware Sargon," Khayon warned to the group when Sargon and Abaddon weren't near. "I like him little and trust him less."
Ulasht shakes his head from the psychic scream of Khayon's. Not thrilled with his tantrum Ulasht says nothing remembering that when he had a similar situation on the Baleful Eye, Khayon let the incident slide.
Ulasht shrugs and chuckles, "How can anyone trust a Sorcerer?"
Deathraven replaces his helmet after wiping the blood from his nose.
"What do we need to get this vessel void-worthy, Abaddon? Those that stay are capable of seeing to the arrangements. I will fly you and Khayon back to the Taloc with anyone else who wants to go."
Draex's broken mind is in constant torment. That little psychic blast is going to have to take a back seat to the pains of his mind
"We will discuss preparations when I return with Falkus and the others." Abaddon replied to Deathraven.
"As you wish, but be warned: Falkus and the others are not as you remember them. The Neverborn that have taken residence within them are bestial, to put it politely."
Deathraven goes to prepare the transport for launch.
Shortly after the others depart, Menstras approaches Draex.
"We should familiarize ourselves with the ship's layout in case we incur boarders.
"As you wish shadow dweller. I feel we would have just traded being on this one ship to jump on two more only to return. Hopefully there is something of interest on this ship everyone has been desperately searching for."
Draex takes off down one of the corridors
Taloc:
When you arrive back on the Taloc Ashur-Kai, Nefertari, the four World Eaters and three Dozen Rubricae in orderly rank wait for you at the end of the gang-ramp.
All eyes locked onto Abaddon as he approached. He bore the scrutiny with ease, even offering a flourishing bow to the horde of staring faces and faceplates.
Abaddon greeted each of the World Eaters warriors in turn, by name. Abaddon not only named each of the World Eaters, he recounted several of their battle company’s deeds during the Great Crusade and in the years inside the Eye when they had served as part of the Fifteen Fangs.
Abaddon then greeted every one the Rubricae by name. Each Rubricae’s name was emblazoned across their shoulder-guard or breastplate, but Abaddon took his time with each, noting honours the now-lost warriors had earned during the Great Crusade, or battles they had fought in the Eye after the Siege of Terra. When he addressed them they turned their helmeted heads to him in slow grinds. These Rubric Marines 'never' move for anyone but their masters. You could see the shock on Ashur-Kais face as if he was just slapped.
Abaddon then reached Nefertari, who stood apart from the ordered ranks of Legiones Astartes warriors.
The winged eldar endured his scrutiny with emotionless, alien composure.
"The Maiden of Commorragh," Abaddon greeted her.
"You make that sound like a title," she replied. The bioluminescent talons of crystal that served as her gauntlet’s fingertips clicked and clacked together as she shifted her stance.
"Many among the Legions know of Khayon’s eldar, hiding from her people in the heart of her enemy’s kingdom. Don’t you hunger, Nefertari? Doesn’t the soul-thirst tear at you night after night?"
She graced him with the shadow of a smile, and walked next to Khayon.
"Forgive my Gothic," Abaddon called after her, "despite killing hundreds of your brothers and sisters, I never learned the tongues spoken by your kind."
Nefertari’s smirk was edged. She herself was a knife with a smile. "I like him," she said beneath her breath.
Abaddon greeted Ashur-Kai last and then turned to Khayon.
"And what of Falkus? Where is he, Khayon?"
"We shall take you to him."
Vengful Spirit:
This ship is one of the largest the Imperium ever produced. Learning every corner of it's shape would take months. Going through all the war trophies and gear in the Titan bay would take weeks. But you do what you can while you wait for the return of Abaddon and the rest of the crew.
Aldegund approaches the bridge console to gain access to all data in the Vengeful Spirit that may be useful, for his purposes of creating weaponry, vehicles and armor. as well as a map and combat capabilities of the ship.
Tech Use
"Take us to Falkus? As I stated earlier he and his Legionnaires have refused to respond to vox transmissions for some time. Now suddenly you have located him?" Ulasht clearly sounds irritated with the Thousand Son sorcerers.
Taloc:
"Just because he doesn't respond to vox doesn't mean we can't find him and his men, lets go." Khayon said to Ulasht.
Vengful Spirit:
The ship is mostly powered down. The Machine Spirit is in sort of a slumber state and there are definitely not slaves, zero aboard the Vengul Spirit, to get this ship airborne again even with the Talocs crew.
There is no inventory of the items Abaddon collected over the last 500 years. Perhaps a task for you complete over the coming months.
Taloc:
"How long ago did you last hear from Falkus?" Abaddon asked.
"It's been several months since we lost contact." Khayon replied.
Abaddon nodded at that. "From afar, I’ve watched my Legion die. Many of them sold their flesh for the promise of power. It’s easy to speak of resisting temptation. It’s harder to resist it when staring down the barrels of a hundred bolters and a pact with the Neverborn is your only chance of survival."
Your group passed four Rubricae standing guard at one of the primary transit routes back to the main passages – they acknowledged Khayon passing without lowering their bolters. A glance at their weapons showed they had not been recently fired.
It did not take long to make note of their influence, for the Secondborn’s presence twisted reality. Black veins cracked their way across the old metal walls, and the Anamnesis’s bronze faces were warped into daemonic visages now resembling female gargoyles and grotesques. The air carried unintelligible whispers, as well as the wet sounds of gluttonous feasting. Breathing in made your senses ache with the ripe taste and tang of marsh water. The Secondborn contained within this district were not polluting or tainting their surroundings. It was nothing more than the strength of their thoughts and desires reshaping the world around them.
You moved through a hive-like series of unused hydroponics chambers, where the smell of ancient vegetation still lingered. Less an arboretum and more a laboratory, now the troughs and cradles stood empty, where once this whole subsection had been a haven of green life. The Tlaloc had thirty such hives to supplement the ration packs consumed by the human crew. Most had long since fallen into disrepair, be it from the necessary skills atrophying amongst the warship’s mortal thralls or the Eye’s effects on lab-grown vegetation.
Menstras keeps pace with the World Eater, his bolter searching every shadow.
"I do not trust Khayon."
The words come not across any comm channel but rather crack across the his armor's vox grille.
Psyinscience Test
Ulasht reaches out to see if he can pinpoint any strong pull from the warp which may lead the group to Falkus.
"That's the difference between you and I cousin" Draex continues moving forward arms hanging about out carelessly
"I dont trust anyone I have not spilled blood with and even those that I do they are still at arms reach. This alliance we have only happens to be out of circumstance so I wont be taking a bolter round for anyone here, but i will admit things are getting more interesting. Why do you mistrust Khayon?"
"A tune far flung from that sung by our hosts."
Menstras sweeps a side corridor once more, his bolter lingering on nonexistent threats.
"Khayon lacks control of his emotions and we are the ones who pay the price. His psychic outbursts pose more threat to us than our enemy, particularly when they let his 'pets' slip their leash."
Lowering his bolter for but a moment, he faces Draex proper.
Deathraven walks with the party through the area given over to the remnants of the Sons of Horus. His movements seemed relaxed, but he scanned the area around him as if expecting an ambush from any angle. He no longer bore any ill will towards the others, though he certainly wasn't foolish enough to believe that the change was mutual.
"Once, survival wasn't our goal. Survival was second to victory. The enemy was clear, and he was in our sights. Now we accept survival as thralls to unknowable powers that see us as playthings for their amusement. Heh. I guess things really haven't changed that much, now that I think on it."
He glances at Abaddon.
"High Captain, may I ask you a question of a personal nature?"
"Those with the gifts of wizardry are never to be trusted. Ha! Their minds are more broken then ours. Gateways to horror they believe they can control. The psychic bastards of our legions killed more of us them the things we were to kill."
draex shrugged "I guess the nails didnt help them much either. They would die in a fit of rage unlike none other. Power surged unchecked and they would implode taking the lot with them. Thats why it was forbade to nail them in after a while. The horrors i have see i will never trust them, but he would be a means to your goal correct? So i guess you must endure. I am here on Lehors command. I would follow him and him only, but dont get me wrong I would take him out first chance i ever sense a betrayal."
Taloc:
Ulasht when you reach out with your senses you feel the warps touch strong in this area. You can't seem to pin point any of your brothers though.
Abaddon looks to Deathraven "What is it brother?"
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After traveling for some time you finally find the first of Falkus’s warriors alone a chamber, standing motionless in his wargear. His Terminator armour looked blackened by immolation, with its helm brutally tusked in a feral glare. The warrior’s lightning claws were idle at his sides, the blades inactive. As you drew closer, you saw why. They were not the consecrated iron of standard design, but talons of dense bone lengthening out from the gauntlets’ fingertips. His armour looked wholly fused to his flesh. The stinking, silvery poison dripping from the bone claws was closer to unique. It resembled mercury and smelt of spinal fluid.
"Kureval," Abaddon greeted the warrior. The Terminator turned his head in a lumbering drift, armour joints growling. The same silver poison ran in slow trickles down his tusks.
"...High Chieftain?" Kureval’s voice was a grinding purr, cooled by disbelief.
Abaddon’s answer was to bare his teeth in a vicious smile through the ratty fall of filthy hair.
"High Chieftain," Kureval repeated, and lowered himself into a kneel at once.
The former chieftain of the Justaerin made no mockery of his brother’s obeisance. He rested his hand on Kureval’s shoulder-guard, whispering a Cthonian greeting.
The Terminator rose slowly, armour joints snarling. Like the rest of the Justaerin, his armour was the black of his Legion’s elite rather than the traditional sea-green of the common Sons of Horus.
"Come with us, Kureval."
"You are seeing the universe through different eyes. May I ask how that came to be?"
Taloc:
Abaddon closes them for a moment, touching his fingertips to them. "I looked into the Astronomican for a long, long time, listening to its verses and choruses. The Emperor’s Light did this to me."
"I see. Were you able to glean any insight from it?"
Taloc:
"I just see things differently now Deathraven." he grins and leaves it at that.
"Perhaps that is true but I take little joy in the matter. We would do well to keep our eyes upon him and our blades closer."
"Or we could split him in half"
Draex shrugs it off...
"I care not from whince the blood flows"
"Our encounter with the Emperor's psychic avatar didn't go well enough for us to gain any wisdom from it."
Deathraven made a conscious effort not to glare at Khayon accusingly as he said this,
Taloc:
On you walked, and the process repeated itself again and again. Falkus’s warriors were scattered throughout the subdistrict, each one standing motionless, statuesque in their isolation. Some faced walls, some stood next to shut-down waste processing generators; three occupied different sections of the same chamber, staring out of the reinforced viewglass at the planet turning below.
All of them awakened in Abaddon’s presence, as though his nearness brought their spirits back to dwell within their flesh. All of them followed in a loose column, putting up a chorus of heaving joint mechanics.
By the time you found Falkus, sixteen of the Justaerin thudded along the deck behind you. It felt almost funereal despite their apparent vitality.
Falkus occupied another dry, dead hydroponics laboratory. He was as motionless as the others, and reacted the same as they had when Abaddon drew closer.
"Falkus,’" Abaddon said softly. The horned helm rose and turned, and behind the red eye lenses I sensed the warrior’s thoughts sliding into alignment. I have called it an awakening, but that is not quite true. It felt like a restoration, not a rise from slumber.
"Ulasht," Falkus said first, his voice sluggish, like blood from a corpse. And then, "Ezekyle. I knew you weren’t dead."
"My brother." Abaddon was not content with a distant greeting. He gripped wrists with his former lieutenant.
"We should begin at once," Falkus said, tapping his heart with Cthonian sincerity.
"With Khayon’s aid," Abaddon said, "the Vengeful Spirit will sail again. My brothers, we are few and they are many, but the Canticle City will fall."
Vengul Spirit:
The flagship of the Sons of Horus was a treasure of information. The most decorated war ship in the Imperium had records on almost everything imaginable.
Traveling it's halls was also a nightmare at times. The crystal spirits always seemed to want to reach out and touch you as you passed. So much death took place here the ship was basically a ghost ship now.
Deathraven observed the reunion in silence, suddenly feeling very out of place, as if intruding on something sacred.