Violators

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The Sonic Dreadnought is a distinctive iteration of the Mk IV pattern, used by the descendents of the Emperor’s Children Traitor Legion as well as a number of associated renegade factions such as the Violators and the Flawless Host. The Emperor’s Children were the first Chaos Space Marines to draw upon the vile blessings of Slaanesh – the Prince of Excess – and the first to unlock the secrets of cacophonous and blasphemous sonic weaponry. Such weapons draw upon the raw power of the Warp, modulated by the psyche of the bearer, to unleash a deafening and discordant sonic assault that is as lethal to the foe as it is exultant to the user. Such weapons range in scale from the handheld sonic blaster to the siren carried by the Knight-class walker known as the Subjugator

Observation towers leaned insanely, shaking as if with laughter, and trained spindly arrays of clockwork sensors on the heavens, seeking new experiences in the patterns of Torvendis’s many moons. Temples to Slaanesh were suspended on ropes of human hair above bottomless pits, silken pavilions protected by huge sweeping blades of gold and silver, armatures and daemon-bound engines studded with diamonds. Billowing clouds of incense turned the sky purple-black, where segmented sky-wyrms coiled and banners to the Pleasure God rippled up into the sky. In a wide ring around the city’s very heart stood spiked barricades guarded by the Traitor Space Marines of the Violators Chapter, their armour sky blue with purple-grey ichor weeping from the joints. And beyond these barriers stood Charybdia Keep. The city itself didn’t have a name, and was usually referred to as the ‘City’, or the ‘Capital’, or not mentioned at all. For it was simply the hinterland of Charybdia Keep. The mines beneath the city supplied itsmaterials, and the city was itself a mine for slave-courtesans and the substances that could only be rendered down from the living. The keep was the seat of power on Torvendis, a power that had achieved dominance such as few had ever achieved in the planet’s long and tortuous history. The keep was the spiritual, military, political and physical lynchpin of the planet. It was built of pale grey fossilised remains precisely quarried from the rocks of Torvendis and tesselated into massive straight-edged blocks. Polished ribs and gleaming teeth sparkled on its surface. Corners were braced with webs of skeletal fingers. Schools of ossified sea monsters were packed into the dense foundation blocks that formed pillars sunk deep into the earth. The keep was a kilometre high, and every stone in its construction had once been something living.

The daemon looked at Lady Charybdia with most of its eyes. The others whirled madly as it snarled and slavered. ‘Are you hungry?’ she asked sweetly. The daemon growled, dog-like. ‘Good.’ At her gesture, the legionary readied his spear. ‘You will speak, spawn of ugliness. You know what I can do to you if you refuse. ’The daemon shuddered, trying to tear the spell-bound chains from the stone. It had struggled like this for aeons, ever since it had been unwittingly summoned from the rock face by the hapless slave-miners, and hunted down by the Chaos Marines of the Violators. Lady Charybdia had long since come to the conclusion that it was too stupid to give up, and had to be tormented into obedience like an animal.

Their attacker must have once worn armour, but the armour and flesh had become one. Skin grew in rags around the massive greaves, slick muscles for hydraulics, spines of bone jutting from rips in the dark scarlet metal. Each arm ended not in a hand but in a club-like slab of muscle covered in orifices from which weaponry jutted – on one arm were three cycling autocannon barrels spitting white tracers of fire, from the other stabbed the snout of a frag missile. The dead-skinned eyes and mouth opened and gun barrels poked out, chattering left and right. The figure was three and a half metres tall with armoured shoulders just as broad, its armour plates packed with muscle, its shape shifting as new weapons were extruded from its flesh. Yrvo had seen Space Marines before, distant figures guarding the battlements of Charybdia Keep – but this was something different, ugly and brutal when Lady Charybdia’s Violators were elegant in their strength.

In the city, orgies and complex blood-ceremonies paused as the scream washed over them. Far below, in the mines, final tendons of sanity snapped and for a while there was pandemonium as the slaves fought each other at the rock face, trying to anoint themselves with one another’s blood to appease a waking god. The legionaries laid into them with nerve whips and pain glaives until they had been battered back into obedience. On the battlements surrounding Charybdia Keep, the Space Marines of the Violators Chapter made new patterns in their devotion-scars, to signify that a new enemy had arisen.

Grik had conspired with Lady Charybdia to turn the proud Emerald Sword into a farm growing a human crop, feeding the monstrous hordes that Lady Charybdia ruled over. The corruption of the betrayal had turned Grik into a monster and given him the power to speak with the daemons, and had robbed the tribe of the fire that once so nearly took it to dominion over the whole Canis Mountains.‘Not one of us will survive, Golgoth,’ Hath was saying. ‘We won’t get past the first wall. We will find ten thousand legionaries against us, maybe even the Violators. They will summon daemons to face us.’

But something had awoken, and it seemed to be calling itself Ss’llSh’Karr. Sorcerers were stalking her world uninvited. The suns and moons were leading a frantic dance, as if trying to communicate something to those living on the world below. How much of it mattered? Were these the Chaotic nature of the Maelstrom pulling on Torvendis, just to make sure that nothing on the planet was routine? Or omens of something more? There were millions of legionaries that Lady Charybdia could call upon,howling daemon packs and the shock troops of the Violators. There was nothing she could not cope with, even if doing so broke the city’s concentration on the glories of the Pleasure God. A small sacrifice to be made if necessary, and then she could get back to doing the work of Slaanesh. This is what Lady Charybdia told herself as she walked out of her chapel, trying not to feel the dead eyes of the daemon’s skull staring at her as she left.

 

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The door to the chambers swung open, and the last member of Lady Charybdia’s council of war entered. Commander Demetrius of the Violators Space Marine Chapter was about four metres high and the same across, a massive metallic block mounted on hydraulic claw-footed legs. Each articulated shoulder ended in an arm-mounted weapon, a four-barrelled assault cannon on the left and a bouquet of barbed energy-lashes on the right. The flat surfaces of his ceramite-encased body were painted a pale blue-grey, like dead men’s lips, with the symbol of the Violators – a lightning bolt crossed by a dagger – wrought in gold over one side of the chest. On the other, dense script had been etched telling of the hundreds of engagements in which Demetrius had fought and the kill-marks of the important foes he had slain. On the centre of the chest, the sarcophagus where Demetrius’s physical body was held, was a fleshy knot like an unopened flower, pale and dead but pulsing with the machine’s heart. The dreadnought stomped up to the table, servos growling. The petals of the sarcophagus opened and Demetrius’s old body was revealed, a scorched corpse with arms and legs sheared off, the face rotten and drained. Fronds, like the tendrils of some sea creature, waved from the skin – they were exposed and elongated nerve endings, the only way that any sensation could be delivered into Demetrius’s sense-dulled mind. He had been horribly wounded on some distant battleground and recovered – though his body had been wrecked his tactician’s mind was intact, and his Chapter had entombed him in a dreadnought’s shell so he could continue to lead them in the eternal war that Chaos demanded of them. ‘I am glad you could make it, commander, ’said Lady Charybdia. ‘How is life on the walls?’ ‘Tolerable, my lady,’ replied Demetrius, his voice a low, cracked rattle from his ruined throat. ‘The air tastes of war. We shall serve our god soon, I think.’ ‘That is looking very likely. I can trust you and your men to ensure that the current situation is resolved rapidly and with a minimum of disruption to our sacred work. Is my trust justified?’ ‘It is, my lady. Every one of my battle-brothers is worth a thousand barbarians and more. ’‘Good. I suspect that I shall be calling on you soon.’ Lady Charybdia’s voice was cold. Compared to her Demetrius was a brute, his own lust for experience limited to the violence of warfare. Lady Charybdia had once been like that, revelling in slaughter, but she knew now that it had just been a phase on the way to the current perfection of her senses. Demetrius was stuck in the pattern of bloodshed which became ever more ordinary for him as he absorbed every experience that battle could give him. One day he would become unable to experience anything at all and his mind would wilt away, leaving just the dreadnought to house some other butcher. The Violators were extremely valuable, undoubtedly the best troops on Torvendis, but their presence reminded Lady Charybdia of the stagnation that was the fate of every unwary servant of Slaanesh. ‘Caduceia,’said Lady Charybdia, ‘appraise us of the situation, if you will.’

‘Perhaps a hundred thousand of the tribes people. We killed a great many but more are flocking to their cause. We cannot estimate the numbers of the daemons. Ss’ll Sh’Karr once commanded millions.’ ‘But this is not Ss’ll Sh’Karr. Sh’Karr is dead.’ ‘Yes, my lady. But some inheritor of his could rival him in power.’ ‘Not if we send him back to his god first. Commander?’ ‘My lady?’ answered Demetrius. ‘The daemon lord is yours. The Blood God is the foulest of all our foes in the heavens, I expect your battle-brothers to execute the full anger of Slaanesh against his creation.’ Demetrius’s smile split the skin of his cheeks so a rictus grinned down from the width of his face. ‘A pleasure, my lady.’ His servos buzzed with excitement.

‘My lady, do not misunderstand us, Slaanesh would never desert you, but… but there are many prophecies, and many of them are coming true. A calf with three heads, as the seers of the Crimson Knights foresaw, and a litter of half-devils with tentacles for hands such as was written by the prophets of the undersea kingdoms. They are omens of destruction and mistrust, the oldest there are. They say that something has returned that means the Pleasure God ill.’ ‘Indeed it has. The Blood God’s spawn walk Torvendis again. Prophecies can come true all they like, sage, no number of daemons can hope to breach the city and hold it against us.’ Demetrius laughed, a rasping, throaty sound. ‘You have fully one quarter of the Violators Chapter on your walls, lady. They could throw the whole Maelstrom against us and we would hold.’

 

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Night was day to auto-senses. It amused Commander Demetrius of the Violators that lesser, unimproved men thought darkness was an advantage. He could see the arrows from his vantage point on the inner walls of Charybdia Keep, as they flitted down from the city’s edge towards some enemy infiltrator. A few of the enemy might return with intelligence about the city’s defences, but what could they really tell? There were more than enough soldiers garrisoning the many buildings and crossroads to face any invader. And even if the enemy knew about the four hundred Violators Space Marines forming a ring of steel around Lady Charybdia’s Keep, by the time any of them reached this far they would be few in number and bled nearly dry. It would be good sport, thought Demetrius, for the men he left behind to defend the keep. Not as good, though, as the quarry for which he would lead the hunt. Demetrius flexed his massive metal frame, feeling the weight of the assault cannon and the sinuous, living tendrils of the neuro-lash. He racked smoke grenades into the launchers on the upper surface of his carapace, feeling the ovoid canisters filling the breech, spinning the barrels of the cannon and letting the massive-calibre ammunition trickle enticingly through the chambers. Demetrius itched all over for battle, from his wet fleshy core to the sensitive sheets of armaplas protecting his sarcophagus. Once, he had been terrified of being entombed in a frigid cold ceramite box, unable to feel the sensations that gave him reason to kill. But Demetrius’s nervous system, refusing to give up its lifeblood of pleasure-pain, grew like roots into the fabric of the dreadnought body and made him more sensitive to the tide of battle than he had ever been as an able-bodied Space Marine. Yes, it would be a good fight. He longed to feel fire scoring his paintwork and blood spattering his artificer-honed armour plates. ‘Commander?’ voxed a voice in Demetrius’s ear. Demetrius turned to see Techmarine Klaes, a tendriled servo-arm reaching blindly over his shoulder pad. ‘Techmarine. We are ready? ’‘The fleet is prepared. They were hungry after so long, it took some effort to wake them up and get them fed. But they can fly at an hour’s notice.’ ‘Good. I want you with us, Klaes. Nothing can succeed without the fleet, and they listen to you above all other.’ ‘I am proud to serve.’ ‘You will be proud when the Blood God’s whelp is dead, Klaes. For now,revel in the battle and remember for whose praises you fight.’Klaes nodded his helmeted head. Like many Violators he never removed any part of his armour – Slaanesh looked favourably on the Chapter and often altered their bodies so their sensations and pleasures were more immediate. No one knew for sure what Klaes really looked like any more –and that was part of what made the Violators beloved of Slaanesh. Every Space Marine was a temple to the Pleasure God, his flesh sacred and inviolate, and displaying those holy mutations was like throwing open the doors of a temple to any passer-by. Demetrius himself rarely revealed what he looked like beneath the massive armoured hull of the dreadnought body. When he did, it was in the presence of only those who truly represented the ideals of Slaanesh, like Lady Charybdia herself, or that of a great enemy before the kill. ‘The force is selected then, commander?’ said Klaes.‘Our best,’ replied Demetrius, voice grating from the dreadnought’s vox-casters. ‘Koivas. Haggin. Most of the Assault units. Plenty of steel, plenty of battle-lust.’ Demetrius turned back to look out over the city, with its millions of lights and glittering seas of spearpoints. ‘Lead the battle-brothers in their wargear rites. They must feel every bullet they fire. There will not be another fight like this on Torvendis for a good long time.’Klaes headed off below the battlements, to bless the boltguns and armour of the Violators, that Slaanesh might send every sensation they felt straight into the soul of the wielder. Haggin would be murmuring prayers devotedly, while Koivas would be filling his system with the cocktails of combat drug she had become all but immune to. Devriad’s squad would be carving devotions onto one another’s armour. Every Violator would be shuddering with anticipation for the battle – Slaanesh had ordained that every one of them would see bloodshed when the sun next went down, both those who stayed to defend the keep and those who accompanied Demetrius on Lady Charybdia’s own sacred mission. It would be a good day, thought Demetrius. One of the best.

 

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If Ss’ll Sh’Karr was at their head, he would carry with him the weight of legend, but Lady Charybdia had not been idleas queen. Her city brimmed over with traps and killing grounds, where even unarmed slaves and slovenly hedonist-priests would have their uses in blocking up the narrow arteries of walkways. Ss’ll Sh’Karr could attack if he wished. His army would be repulsed, and the Violators would see to it that even forging a new skull wouldn’t be enough to save the daemon. Lady Charybdia swept back into the keep, leaving her sages to deal with the clean up. There were new legends to write before the sun came up again.

Commander Demetrius flicked through the vox-channels, relishing the taste of the confusion. He revelled in the potential of his allies’ terror – the graver the threat, the more profound the thrill of battle. It was clever, he thought, how the horde had attacked, raising the ocean and sending in those who had survived raiding the rivers and seas. Worthy, almost, of a Space Marine’s planning. But not quite. Below Demetrius, the waves of the new blood ocean crashed against the walls that ringed Charybdia Keep. Floating bodies were gathering against the buttresses of the defences, and as more rose to the surface there would be a formidable, stinking flotsam at the base of the walls. But it made no difference how many slaves and conscripts died this day.

No matter what the attacking hordes could dream up, they would never be able to get past these walls and into the keep. Not when the Violators were here to meet them. Demetrius would not be among them. He had other matters to attend to. There was a sudden roar behind him. He pivoted his massive dreadnought body to see the beast rising from its moorings behind the wall, as did all the hundred Space Marines Demetrius had assembled on the walls. They were mostly trained for close-quarter bloodshed, armed with chainswords and other, more exotic weapons they had fashioned or found. Haggin, who led one of the largest warbands, wore a huge scissoring crab-like power claw on each hand. Koivas fought with the barbed tendrils that grew from the lower half of his face as mandibles, keeping his hands for the twin bolt pistols he always carried.

Their armour was pale blue, often stained with the juices of their bodies that ran from the joints or riven with battle-scars worn proudly. Every head was turned towards the beast that rose level with the battlements amidst the bellowing of its engines. The Thunderhawk gunship was monstrous. Its wings were covered in thick, gnarled skin, between which was suspended the huge underslung fuselage painted in the Violators’ colours. Muscular tentacles had grown through the metal and clung all over the hull like roots. The front viewports were deformed into warped metal slits, pale glows leering out. Nothing living had been into the cockpit of the Thunderhawk gunship for centuries, ever since a daemon had first been enticed into the craft’s machine-spirit. Now the whole fleet was a menacing flock of huge winged beasts, able to strike from the air with greater speed and precision than even a Space Marine pilot could manage. A further pair of Thunderhawks, similarly mutated, rose above the battlements.

They turned and their bellies opened, revealing payload compartments ringed with grav-cushioned benches. Demetrius waved his whip-arm and Koivas yelled an order to his men, who clambered up into the belly of the first Thunderhawk. The other warbands followed suit, a hundred Chaos Marines in total, enough Violators to grace any battlefield. Demetrius himself stood under the last Thunderhawk as tentacles draped down from the payload compartment and wrapped around him. They hauled his huge metal body up into the heart of the craft and the fuselage closed beneath him. There were thirty Chaos Marines in here with him, seventy more in the other craft, bathed in the dim biological glow of the Thunderhawks’ innards. The air was thick and close, and smelled of the potent warrior-hormones that coursed through the veins of the Violators.‘Klaes?’ voxed Demetrius. Commander?’ replied the Techmarine.‘Take us out. ’‘Yes, sir. ’The grav-couches engaged as the Thunderhawk shot forward, carrying with it the intention to slay the Blood God’s spawn for a second time.

 

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‘Open!’ yelled Commander Demetrius, and the belly of the Thunderhawk gunship split open like a seed pod. The city whirled beneath, dizzying towers and clouded sky alternating with the swirling blood, as the noisome air was sucked out of the passenger hold and replaced by a howling wind. The noise was vast, air rushing through the hold mixed with stuttering explosions from the gunship’s cannon. Commander Demetrius’s eyes peered through the dreadnought’s ocular sensors and picked out a sudden ripple of grey flesh shot through with greasy, smoking machinery. Not that he needed to see. His mutated nervous system could feel the Blood God’s taint all around. Sh’Karr was in the blood ocean right below them. ‘On my mark!’ yelled Demetrius over the vox. ‘The landing zone is the Temple Precinct of Opulence Inflamed!’ He jabbed his whip-taloned arm towards a circle of purple-streaked stone sweeping by beneath them, supported on a column above the blood surface like a huge stone mushroom. ‘Mobile fire pattern and keep your wits about you, we’ll lure him up! ’His vision strobed as acknowledgement runes flashed on the back of his eye. His sergeants were ready. ‘Drop!’ ordered Demetrius and suddenly the grav-couch restrains were disengaged, dropping the thirty Space Marines packed into the Thunderhawk straight down.

Their jump packs ignited as one, slowing their descent and giving them control over where they fell. Demetrius himself didn’t bother – his sarcophagus split open and he angled the thick metal plates like fins, guiding his massive metal body as it fell. His skin was open to the rushing air. It pulled at his exposed nerve endings, sending a thrill of pain through his broken body. It was like plunging into an ocean of razor blades. It was for experiences like this that Demetrius held Slaanesh above all other gods – but it would be just a taste of true sensation before the killing began. Demetrius slammed into the sacred precinct, smashing a crater in the stone around him. The shock absorbers of the dreadnought’s legs deadened the impact and in an instant Demetrius was battle-ready, assault cannon scanning for targets, sarcophagus closing around him like the carapace of a beetle. The precinct was circular, and complex diagrams were etched in white on the black, purple-shot surface. A cluster of sacred buildings stood in the centre – several temples to minor aspects of Slaanesh, a life-torch like a huge brazier where sacrifices were immolated, a statue of Arguleon Veq and attendant shrine. There were no worshippers here now, though. A few legionaries were taking shelter amongst the buildings, firing paltry volleys of arrows at the tribesmen clambering over the far side of the stone disc.

Demetrius fired a salvo from his assault cannon, rejoicing inwardly at the feel of hot shrapnel bursting from the many barrels. Explosions stitched along the platform edge and several southern barbarians were burst apart by the cannon fire. Violators were already landing all around Demetrius, chainblades drawn, snapping off bolt pistol shots at the invaders. Demetrius left the warriors for his men to deal with. He stomped towards the nearest edge of the precinct platform, looking down at the blood ocean that churned beneath it. Where was he? Where was the daemon? There! Looping in and out of the blood, swimming at supernatural speed, leading a shoal of his lesser daemons. One of the Thunderhawks swooped low and kicked up fountains of blood with cannon fire – and with a sudden roar Ss’ll Sh’Karr leapt from the water like a sea monster, massive mechanical wings thrusting him from the blood. His head was a fanged bronze gargoyle’s mask, and those huge jaws slammed shut on one of the Thunderhawk’s wings. Demetrius could heart he shriek from where he stood as the wing came away in a fountain of fuel and ichor. The Thunderhawk banked insanely, flipped, and spiralled towards the platform. It overshot Demetrius and ploughed into the precinct in a shower of gore, skidding on its torn belly and careering into the cluster of temples. The monumental statue of Veq was toppled like a great tree. A fuel tank ignited and a blossom of flame erupted. Violators sprinted from the wreckage, ignoring the flames that wreathed their armour. Many survived. Many died. Ss’ll Sh’Karr, Demetrius vowed, would pay for every death with a hundred deaths of his own. Demetrius swivelled his chassis and blasted a volley of assault cannon shells at Ss’ll Sh’Karr, who was clambering up the side of a nearby tower. Shots stitched around the daemon prince, bursting against its flesh and the pulsing machinery. The arriving Violators were at Demetrius’s side, and Demetrius heard Haggin yelling for disciplined fire – those Violators armed with bolt guns or other longer-ranged weapons opened fire at Sh’Karr, spattering his hide with small weapons fire. A missile launcher barked and a trail of smoke led to an explosion just above Sh’Karr. The daemon prince’s metal head turned towards the precinct, and the baleful fiery eyes focused on the Violators forming ranks around Demetrius.

Ss’ll Sh’Karr leapt off the tower and plunged back into the blood. Ripples carved through the water towards the precinct, scattering bobbing corpses. ‘We have him!’ voxed Demetrius. Above him, the third Thunderhawk was swooping low, belly open, to deliver the last payload of Violators. ‘Brothers, prepare for counter charge!’ Chaos Marines were forming up behind their commander. Demetrius’s own neuro-lashes were charged and buzzing. Demetrius’s ocular sensors scanned the surface of the blood just beneath the lip of the stone platform. The ripples were gone – Sh’Karr had dived deep. He calculated the daemon prince would leap when he emerged, one kick bringing him up over the edge and onto the platform, right into the middle of the Violators…There was a thunderous sound of breaking stone. The platform cracked and a huge section of it was raised up, spilling Traitor Marines off their feet. Another, and it was split apart entirely, Sh’Karr’s metal head breaking through and his talons hauling him up. The whole platform tilted. Demetrius kept his footing, as did most of the Chaos Marines, but Sh’Karr’s huge metallic beak snapped and Demetrius saw armoured limbs severed. Every bolt pistol let fly at the daemon prince as he hauled himself up through the broken platform, the bolts blowing chunks from his flesh and raining down boiling daemon blood and spatters of oil as he lunged at Koivas’s warband. They had him at bay. Now it was time for the kill. Demetrius stomped forward, assault cannon barrel red hot as he sprayed shells at Sh’Karr. He lashed out with his other arm and the barbed whips tore deep into the daemon’s thigh, carving right through the muscles, exposing glinting brass bones through rents that rained gore. Sh’Karr bellowed in pain and swiped down with a taloned paw. Demetrius met it with his own whip-fingered hand, deflecting the force of the blow and ducking beneath Sh’Karr’s reach. He was blasting away into the daemon’s torso at point-blank range, lashing out at his leg again. The whips twined around Sh’Karr’s ankle and tightened, biting through the muscle. Demetrius dug a foot into the stone and the servos of his legs screamed as he pulled as hard as his dreadnought’s body would allow. The power plant mounted on the body’s back glowed red-hot as its reactors pumped every last scrap of energy. The whips bit against the bone – but it was not bone, Demetrius realised now, for Sh’Karr’s entire skeleton seemed to be made of hot brass and steel.

The weight of gunfire battered Sh’Karr like a gale. His skin was puckered with bullet wounds and the membranes of his wings were in tatters. Chunks of daemonic flesh flew everywhere. The beast howled and, as Demetrius pulled its monstrous body toppled, crashing slowly to the floor of the platform. Violators gunned their jump packs and leapt onto the huge heaving form, hacking with their chainswords like woodsmen chopping up a fallen tree. Demetrius wrenched his whips free from Sh’Karr’s leg and dodged past the daemon’s lashing arms. Raising his assault cannon, Demetrius emptied his ammunition hoppers directly into Sh’Karr’s face. The brazen skull bent and fractured. Writhing metal mandibles splintered. Flame glared from the sockets and Sh’Karr bellowed in pain. Blood and meat was still raining down, kicked up by the chainblades of the Violators and the bolters still pumped shells into the heaving body. Demetrius wanted to feel the death of the daemon prince who had waged war on Torvendis twice. There might never be a death like this again. H esplit open his sarcophagus and exposed his desiccated body to the outside air, so Sh’Karr’s death-throes would flood directly into his nervous system. Sh’Karr thrashed wildly but most of the Violators held on or avoided his claws, tearing at his skin with guns and blades. Demetrius felt the pain flooding off the daemon prince like a heat haze, pure and monstrous, the anger of the Blood God mixed with the anguish of a cornered beast. It was raining blood. Blood spattered against Demetrius’s bare skin and set his nerve endings afire.

 

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Hot pain flooded through him, igniting old pleasure-centres he thought were long dead. Slaanesh would be well praised by the intensity of experience Demetrius was absorbing in the Pleasure God’s name. Sh’Karr was keening a high, terrible howl. There was a sudden commotion amongst the Violators at the edge of the platform and Demetrius tuned into the vox channel to see what was happening, angry that he might be disturbed during such a holy act of experience.‘…hundreds of them, fall back by fire teams, fall back…!’It was Haggin’s voice. His warband were already turning and retreating, forming up around their flamers and plasma guns. And suddenly, like a dark tide washing against sore, a wall of grey daemon-flesh erupted over the edge of the platform in a shower of blood. A hundred daemons of the Blood God poured onto the platform, summoned by the howling of their prince. The first ranks were toppled by Haggin’s bolter fire but there were too many of them. Demetrius watched as half of Haggin’s warband disappeared beneath bronze talons and snapping jaws. Ss’ll Sh’Karr bucked like a wild animal and was up on his knees as the Violators began to fall back from the daemons. ‘Kill the prince!’ bellowed Demetrius. ‘Kill it first! Hold! Hold!’ But it was to no avail. Individual warbands were being swept aside by the hundreds of attacking daemons. Ss’ll Sh’Karr brushed off the Violators who still clung to his back – some escaped on the jets of their jump packs, others were cast brokenly to the ground and crushed by Sh’Karr’s massive feet. This could not be. Sh’Karr could not live, not when Demetrius had vowed his death to Slaanesh. Daemons leapt at Demetrius but he knocked them aside, battering them with his whips and stuttering assault cannon fire into them. The vox was alive with calls to fall back – Demetrius tried to halt the retreat but those who obeyed his orders were dying as they were surrounded and overwhelmed. Koivas was still alive, his battle-brothers completely cut off in the shadow of Sh’Karr, fending off ranks of daemons. Demetrius would have to finish this himself. He was angry beyond belief that he had been robbed of Sh’Karr’s death. His Violators, the greatest warriors on Torvendis, were in disarray.

The enemy they had been charged with destroying was still alive, standing over them and bellowing in triumph as more Chaos Marines were snatched between his claws and crushed. But Demetrius had vowed to kill Sh’Karr. If he had to do it alone, then so it would be. He threw aside the daemons lunging at him and strode towards the towering daemon prince, daemons’ blood sizzling against his exposed skin. He knocked daemons aside with the barrel of his assault cannon as he ran, clearing a path in front of him with the barbs of his whips. The assault cannon chewed through the last daemons that stood between Demetrius and his quarry. He felt the ammunition hoppers were almost empty, and his power plant almost rupturing with the effort. He didn’t care. Even if he had to spend a year inert while the Chapter artificers mended his dreadnought body, it would be more than worth it. Sh’Karr saw Demetrius, and lashed down at him. The Violator ducked past the gore-slicked talons and charged into Sh’Karr’s leg, barging him back down onto his knees, as he emptied the assault cannon into the daemon’s torso. Demetrius’s whips wrapped themselves around Sh’Karr’s neck and dragged his huge equine skull down, the last few assault cannon shells rattling into the daemon’s face. Huge taloned fingers wrapped around Demetrius’s sarcophagus and h was hauled off the ground. Sh’Karr pulled and Demetrius felt a flash of pain as the whips were torn from the arm of the dreadnought body. Sh’Karr reached up with his other hand and tore the assault cannon arm off at the shoulder. The world span around Demetrius. The shock of such massive injury sent the overcast sky swirling over his head, the towers of the city dancing. A thousand daemons gibbered up at him, their din mixed with the gunfire from the last resisting Violators.

The vox was a wild cacophony of death, and Demetrius realised that he was screaming, too. There was one chance. The power plant of his dreadnought body was white-hot with exertion. If he overloaded the plasma conduits he could rupture the casing and disappear in a ball of plasma fire, taking Sh’Karr’s head and upper body with him. He would die, but then he had often contemplated the ultimate sensation of death and that, mingled with Sh’Karr’s demise, would be a greater sensation than could be imagined. Demetrius was still thinking this as Sh’Karr ripped free the power plant and hurled it off the platform into the sea of blood below. Then, forcing the side of Demetrius’s sarcophagus further open, he reached in with a claw and hooked out the morsel of living meat. Ss’ll Sh’Karr dropped the scrap of wriggling muscle into his maw, and felt it slide, still moving, down his throat. Then he turned to the daemon smilling around his feet, and beckoned to them to follow him. They had seen off a troublesome enemy, but there were many more battles here for them to slake their thirst. Lady Charybdia looked out across the ruins of the outer walls, trying not to gag on the stench of congealing blood. She had retreated into her private chambers where surely nothing could get to her – but as she watched through the scrying orb that hovered in the centre of her bedchamber she began to wonder if anything in her city was safe any more. The dim noises of battle penetrated the walls of her keep, drowning out the droning of the souls imprisoned in the stones, echoing the carnage on and around the walls. The Violators were holding out as best they could. She had chosen well when she had brought them to her walls, for every one of them was the equal of a hundred of the barbarian animals. But there were far more than a hundred invaders for each Violator Marine, and Demetrius had not yet returned as promised.

In fact, Lady Charybdia had not heard back from Commander Demetrius at all. Caduceia and her elite shock companies of legionaries were surrounded and pinned down in the west of the city, trying to stem the flow of invaders still pouring in from the western coast of the blood ocean. Everywhere Lady Charybdia’s forces were cut off, for very few of them were able to use the blood as the invaders were to move from place to place quickly. The city was supposed to be impossible to traverse for an attacking force, but Sh’Karr and his accursed sorcery had completely reversed the situation. Now it was Lady Charybdia’s legions who were trapped, trying to face a foe who could disengage and sail across to the next point of attack. And now, that foe had reached the defences of Charybdia Keep itself. A tide of men and daemons was crashing against the walls. Towers nearby had been felled to form causeways across which horsemen could gallop and foot soldiers could scramble. The Violators were forming fire teams that faced every point of entry with a wall of bolter fire, but more sections were coming under attack with each passing minute. Explosions tore chunks out of the battlements and men clambered up from boats beached on the growing reef of corpses beneath the wall. Walkways and towers were brought down, forming bridges onto the walls. For every breach swept clear by the Violators, another one opened up and vomited a torrent of enemy warriors onto the walls. There was the sound of tramping feet nearby.

Lady Charybdia looked away from the gruesome scenes on the walls and strode out to see a troop of legionaries hurrying down the corridor. Their faces were drawn and many bled from their ears and noses – even in its present state the keep, Lady Charybdia realised, radiated experience rather too pure for most mortals to endure without ill effects. ‘Centurion, does the keep hold?’ demanded Lady Charybdia. The leader of the legionaries stopped and bowed. ‘They are coming in through the north-west, my lady. They came up the sacrificial causeway. We have sealed the area, but there will be more to follow them.’ ‘This is the holiest of ground, centurion. Every enemy foot that steps here is a blasphemy. It will not be permitted. ‘There are so many of them, my lady. They say the Violators are all but lost.’‘I am sure they say many things. But if you are still alive, then the enemy has not won yet. Where are you headed?’ ‘The waste conduits, my lady. With the causeway blocked, that is where they will attack next. Head hunters, I saw them. Half-naked, daubed with paint. They must have come from all over the planet…’‘You will see to it that their journey ends here. The keep will remain in violate or you will die trying to keep it so. Understood?’ ‘Of course, my lady.’ The centurion yelled an order and his men followed him down the corridor and down the grand staircase Even the very heart of the keep was disturbed by the cacophony of war. When the enemy was seen off, there would be unending sacrifices to cleanse the city of the presence before Slaanesh received his due of pleasure again.

 

[MolotovKraken]

Lady Charybdia glanced one more time into the scrying window. The Violators were now little more than a pocket of blue-armoured figures, surrounded by a baying horde of enemies. There was still no sign of Demetrius or his Thunderhawks, but Demetrius was her last hope. If just one of his flying craft remained, she could call for it to land on the roof of the keep and pluck her to safety.

The walls were lost. The Violators had withdrawn into the keep itself, leaving a trail of heaped bodies – Lady Charybdia could hear the ugly barking of their bolters from the dome, and feel the bloating as the keep’s doors and staircases were choked with the dead. Imprisoned spirits were being set free by the destruction, flitting away into the night like wisps of smoke. The sky above was bleeding like the city, nebulae weeping sores that oozed torn stars, comets falling as if fainting in horror. Only the Slaughtersong was unmoved, its cold light a hard jewelled pin stuck into the sky

She could hear the gunfire of the Violators, and the war-cries of the enemy as they charged. She could hear the tide of blood washing against the foundations of the keep, and the splintering of stone as another tower fell. In those last few moments, her heightened senses brought her the sound of a city dying, of a mighty temple falling. And the smells hit her, too – the burning wreckage and the overwhelming stench of congealing blood. A hot wind of suffering blew over her and she could see the pale light of death dawning over her city.

Amakyre watched the city aflame. It had been clear for some time that Lady Charybdia’s forces were doomed. The surprise assault over the ocean of blood had cut the defending army into pieces, isolated and crushed by mobile barbarian forces that attacked from everywhere at once. The barbarian leaders were evidently rather more astute than Lady Charybdia had suspected – even the Violators had been overwhelmed. There were no better troops in the Maelstrom (save, of course, the Word Bearers) and it took a stroke of tactical brilliance to force them into fighting a losing battle.

Golgoth was still telling himself this when he blundered out onto a balcony that projected from the side of the keep. Lush plants had once grown here but were now withering and dead. Golgoth could see out into the city around the keep and below him, the walls where so many men had died rushing the ranks of the Violators.

 

[MolotovKraken]

Rypax Raptor cult was a multifaceted riot of Legions, renegades and traitors of all kinds. Fulgrim’s sons flew down beside Night Lords, Word Bearers and Iron Warriors, their original Legion colours perverted in garish excess or cast aside altogether in favour of the warband’s. Their ranks were swelled with Raptors of the Flawless Host, Violators and Angels of Ecstasy renegades. Even fallen Space Marines of the White Scars and Brazen Claws Chapters were among their number, their oaths to the Imperium forsaken as they embraced Slaanesh and became members of the Rypax cult.

 

[MolotovKraken]

CHAOS SPACE MARINES COLLECTORS GUIDE

 

[MolotovKraken]

Ultramarines Blue, Boltgun metal, Ice Blue, Chainmail

 

[Korra]

Wow, this is a massive load of information! Thank you so much! Will probably take months to read it all!