Chapter Text
“We,” announced Dianthus, as with a flourish of his blade he offered a fluid salute, "are the five perfect murderers of the Cruel Fantasia.”
The breeze’s gentle fingers plucked the trees’ rustling branches for a moment. Nothing else moved.
“I don’t think we went with that one,” Omri offered helpfully.
“The Iron Warrior vetoed it,” agreed Szaareth Zahn.
A pale and slender Drukhari warrior spat upon the ground beside her, and turned to her companion to speak.
“What a hideous tongue.” Dianthus hadn’t the time, the funds, nor the particular inclination to obtain a helmet that could automatically translate for him.
“Don’t worry, we’ll soon part her from it.” White lightning licked the tips of his claws as the Night Lord activated them.
“Loosely,” Amenirdis Qar began, once again taking on the tone of a seasoned lecturer, “the epithet she used to describe us translates as ‘moron.’ Then she commented upon the ease with which she will gut us.”
“Ah,” replied Dianthus. He rolled his neck and shoulders to prepare his body for the fight to come, looking almost light on his feet despite the pink and purple ceramite that covered but some of his scarred and pierced flesh.
“I don’t know about you, gentlemen,” Qar said, as he raised his staff in silent greeting. “But I take offense to that.”
“Certainly, it would indeed be a great challenge to gut–”
Dianthus’ next words were obliterated by the sound of a mass-reactive shell exploding against a tree trunk. The mighty crack of timber as it fell, smashing against the tall grass and scattering Drukhari left and right, also drowned the alien shouts of alarm.
Carnyx was barrelling towards the rolling and charging Drukhari, firing two more well-aimed shots with his bolt pistol before mag-locking it to his thigh and switching to his power fist to save their limited ammunition.
Dianthus sighed over the vox, but the sound was lost in all the screaming.
Amenirdis Qar stepped quickly to the side, blocking Omri from the incoming hail of tiny crystals that sought to penetrate their ceramite and bury deep within their flesh. An ornate shield that glittered with blue and green arcane architecture enveloped the two of them. The little crystals bounced off harmlessly and were lost in the lush grass at their feet.
In the temporary protection of the strange turquoise bubble that held them, Omri whispered a heartfelt prayer to the Lord of Battle. Bone claws burst from the dried blood-brown of his gauntlets, and he groaned over the vox as his body readied for war.
Szaareth Zahn was nowhere to be seen, but lightning crackled in the shadows, and Drukhari warriors were falling.
Dianthus cast about for an opponent that would not bore him. In the end, he did not have much say in the matter, as a Drukhari leapt down from where she had been perched upon a tree branch. Clad in glistening leathers, her white flesh pierced and scarred and exposed, she slowly rose to her full willowy height. She pointed her sword at him with an insouciant leer. He tilted his head to the side, the sparking green plume of his helmet brushing his shoulder guard.
“Tepid,” he sighed. “Utterly pedestrian.”
The Drukhari woman grinned with fearsome teeth, and with a deft flick of her delicate, narrow wrist the sword fractured and elongated, its individual sections detaching and glittering in the sun like segments of a long-bodied insect. She cracked her weapon, now transformed, and the bladed whip made a noise to rival the echoing sounds of death that rang out throughout the clearing.
Dianthus nodded in approval. “You have me now,” he said, as he flicked his blade in a come-hither motion.
Long ago, during the days of the Great Crusade, there were far-flung outposts of humanity that had never beheld the Emperor’s Angels. The first time their ceramite boots landed on a planet to enforce compliance, the men and women of these settlements– in their awe and in their fear– saw the power and the lethality of these heavily armoured transhumans. But what was not immediately obvious to them was the Astartes’ capacity for dexterity and grace.
Not all of His warriors fought like they were dancing, to be sure. But Dianthus, clad in the colours of the fallen Emperor’s Children, was as light on his feet as the tall and slender Drukhari. They whirled around one another in a tempest of swirling death, the bladed whip curling around Dianthus’ wrist but failing to pierce his plate, while he landed cut after cut on the exposed flesh of his opponent, adding more scars to her significant collection.
Dianthus found the duel was beginning to grow stale. There were so many other delicious challengers on the field whose blood his blade hungered to taste. In his moment of distraction, the tip of the whip curled around his gorget. The Drukhari grinned triumphantly, but Dianthus pulled back swiftly. The whip failed to constrict his throat, and the power behind his motion had yanked his confident opponent off balance.
She fell to her knees, and Dianthus readied his sword to deliver death to the xenos before him. But before he could drink down her terror and remorse– he did not doubt that were their roles reversed, she would do the same for him– she smiled up at him, or rather slightly past him.
Before he could whirl around to decapitate whoever had been sneaking up in his substantial shadow, he felt a blade sink into the vulnerable space behind the joint of his left knee. Immediately his blood boiled as if he had been shot full of combat stimms. Whatever venom had coated the blade, it sang through his blood with a sweet agony that made him feel like opening a dark door and sinking into the enticing heat of madness’ embrace.
It was his turn to fall to one knee, as his former opponent rose, and his new attacker flanked him. An ignominious defeat this would be, he knew, and he cast about for any salvation at all.
Carnyx Thronn stood above him. He had drawn his bolter once more. Its barrel was pointed between Dianthus’ eyes.