ℭ𝔬𝔫𝔠𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔦𝔞 𝔇𝔞𝔪𝔫𝔞𝔱𝔬𝔯𝔲𝔪 — Anarchia and Nazgul

[Nazgul]

In the dark chamber of a half-destroyed cathedral, lit only by the few remaining candles flickering in the shaking shrines of Ophelia IV, a lone inquisitor flanked by a set of four Sisters of Battle kneeled before a likely ancient hand-painted mural, depicting the God-Emperor, whose blinding radiance and shining light pushes away his enemies. Despite the overwhelming power of the God-Emperor, present even in the mural, it appeared cracked and half-faded. In the deafening sounds of artillery cracking the earth around them, the Inquisitor and his escorts appeared to be entirely unbothered by the fact that the very planet they were on was slowly suffocating in a smog of daemons and heretics. The inquisitor clasped a rosary in his hands, his knuckles white hot from his grip on the beads, hidden by his leather gloves. The sound of a nearby crack, crash and boom was drowned out only by the soft, calm whispers of his prayers. "O Immortal Emperor: have mercy on us, miserable unworthies that we are." Smoke filled the air. Through holes in the roof of the cathedral, one could make out the vague, foggy contrasts of lasgun shots flying into the sky before the smog swallowed them whole. "O Master of the Galaxy: protect your flock from the alien. O Keeper of Light: guide our darkened path with your radiance." The siege had begun some hours ago, but one glance at the city and one could've been led to believe that it had been weeks, if not months. The streets were deserted, shrines unattended, cogitators stuck in loops or expired. Ramshackle barricades broke up the monotony of the destroyed streets, showing heavy signs of battle all over the city. Ophelia IV had been a stronghold prepared to fight off any siege -- it was, after all, home to many Sisters of Battle. But while the Sisters of Battle would prove a foe too hard to fight for outside sources, the true threat came from within. It always came from within, as far as the Inquisitor of the Ordo Hereticus was concerned, but it pained him that he had arrived too late. Ophelia IV had not fallen yet, but it was evident that they were in the final hours of the planets life before it would be lost to Chaos. Only a miracle could save the planet - a miracle that he intended to put into motion. "We are your Warriors and we are servants of Thee. We stand free from Blindness of heart, free from hypocrisy, vainglory and deceits, but captive to hatred, malice and anger, to the filth, the alien, the heretic." The Inquisitors whispered prayer became louder, as he was whipped into a dogmatic fury the likes of which could only be seen in true believers of the God-Emperor. The soft murmur of his voice was strengthened also by the Sisters of Battle, who had now audibly joined him in prayer, heads bowed to the mural. A distant cry, followed by a guttural scream and the unnatural sounds of the entities that had begun flooding the streets interrupted their prayer, though neither the Sisters nor the Inquisitors appeared dissuaded. Whispers turned to spoken prayer, not one but many, as they finished their prayer to the God-Emperor together, steeled in their resolve, and aware of their doomed mission. Death was ahead. Suffering was their prayer. "By Thy agony and bloody sweat; by thy Golden Throne and Thy death, By thy destruction and re-emergence as the God of Men, keep and strengthen us, we who fight for Thee." The Inquisitor rose, the Sisters followed. As he stood, he turned round to face his escort, though they were more under his charge at the moment than he theirs. His face was rugged, not only from the relatively short siege they had endured so far, but from trials and tribulations of the past as well. Scars littered his face, a short beard gave him grit. The rest of his face was hidden underneath a hood, the trim lined with inscribed and stitched lines of scripture. His identification as an Inquisitor - the Inquisitorial rosette - was a simple, functional symbol of the Inquisition, fastened to the flap of his great coat, whose collar was peaked and covered his neck. All in all he made for a suitably mysterious, yet intimidating appearance to all those who had something to fear. "We must get to the dungeons below," the Inquisitor informed his escort. "This filth comes from somewhere, and we must root it out at the source. There's no sense or purpose in fighting the heretic in the street if for every heretic we kill, there's twenty more deep below the surface of the streets calling more daemonspawn to our world." He turned halfway around, and glanced through the broken lead in glass windows, where once had been a beautiful image of a saint or perhaps the God-Emperor himself, or one of his Angels performing miracles, and now had made way for smoke, death and heresy. There were others here, he knew, working towards similar goals. There had to be. A world like this, full of the God-Emperors most devout, and unfortunately also dungeons full of those most vulnerable to the corruption of heresy, brought here to repent. These heretics had to have been watched by something, someone, and who better to watch them than the Ordo Hereticus and the Adepta Sororitas. They had gotten overconfident, brought the enemy into their midst, seeking to punish them for their misdeeds, he thought. There was no kindness in these thoughts, only the righteous fury of the Emperor, for indeed they should have slain these heretics when they were discovered, and not brought them onto one of the holiest shrine worlds. A mistake they would pay for dearly, but one that also provided some comfort: Inquisitors and Sisters would be plentiful. "We know the way, Inquisitor," the foremost Sister spoke, her voice calm and in control, despite the chaos around them. "Though the dungeons are deep and stretch far and were inhabited mostly by those brought here to repent. I cannot begin to imagine what manner of filth roams the-" "You need not imagine, you need only bring me there so that we can seek to end this." A brief pause, before she obliged. "Yes, Inquisitor." The two shared a brief moment of eye contact, before the Sister turned and began leading the group out of the destroyed cathedral. It was best not to mull on the what-could-be's of the dungeons. It would be bad for morale. Morale that, frankly, wasn't there. The Inquisitor turned back even further to give the God-Emperors mural one final glance. For a second, he thought he saw the halo around the God-Emperors head light up with real light, not paint... "Inquisitor? We have to move," the female voice came again. "Is everything.. alright?" Startled, the Inquisitor turned around. "No..- yes, everything is alright. I just thought I saw.." his voice trailed off, caught in his thoughts. A miracle? A sign? Here, on Ophelia IV, amidst all this chaos and heresy.. or a reflection of the candlelight off the walls? "Saw what, Inquisitor?" "Nothing. I thought I saw a person through the window, but it was just the smoke. Let's go." With a steady gait he moved through the now-destroyed row of pews that had once given space to many of the God-Emperors faithful to pray as his flock, for him to shepherd from atop his Golden Throne. The presence of such symbols of worship, destroyed or intact, steeled his resolve. At the end of the long corridor lined with pews, the Sisters guided him left down a sharp winding set of spiral stairs, made of dark brick, that would bring them deeper underground, into a city beneath the surface. Shrine world or otherwise, it was hard to escape the inevitable filth that came with housing repentants. He could smell them. Instinctively, he touched the hilt of his power-maul and the pistol grip of his bolter. Heresy was surely not far away. ​ ​ ‎‎​

​

 

[Anarchia]

The sky was bleeding…​ That was the only word Valtria's mind could use to describe the sky of Ophelia IV that morning, a scar of incomprehensible iridescence that gouged it's way through the planets crimson sky, her eyes had only glimpsed it once; that brief moment after she awoke of staring up into the tear in reality had been enough to cause rivulets of blood to stream from her crimson eyes and down her pale cheeks, while the screams of a billion, billion damned souls echoed in her mind as the sun rose over her now besieged homeworld. The thudding of her boots could be heard echoing against the damp walls of the city's catacombs as she descended into its murky depths, a string of prayer beads shifted through the armoured fingers of her left hand, clinking against one another as they passed through her grip. Each bead representing a hundred perceived sins that stained her soul, each one paid for with killing, flagellation, and blood. She had already committed seven notable sins in the opening hours of the siege. The first was slumbering when the rift tore itself across the sky… the other six were for lacking the strength to save her sisters, to save her family. Her murmurs echoed back at her with each step. "My Emperor… Deliver our souls from heresy… Deliver us to you when we cross that line into martyrdom."​ Sister Eugenia had been the youngest of their squad, barely out of the scholar progenium, assigned to Ophelia IV for training in preparation to be shipped to battlefields abroad in the near-endless expanse that was the Imperium; A group of imperial citizens, driven mad by the rifts influence dragged her down and ripped her limb from limb, her screams died on her lips but they still rung clearly in Valtria's mind… The second and third, Oh-Qu and Hastia were struck down by a horde of jibbering monstrosities that flooded the streets in an ambush. Warpfire had melted their flesh from their bones, and they died in crumpled, burning messes on the streets. ​ "Grant me a shard of your courage, of your might… and I will burn away your enemies."​ The fourth, Miriya, Valtria hadn't witnessed, although she listened to the thudding of heavy bolter shells crashing against cathedral walls until they fell silent, Miriya's final sacrifice was to purchase a few fleeting minutes for the others to banish a greater demon of Slaanesh back into the warp, she had succeeded in her purpose, and Valtria had succeeded in hers… At the loss of Gertrude and Arialyn… Gertrude had been a veteran of a dozen holy wars, the eldest of the squad… Although in the end her age had shown, and she hadn't been swift enough to dance around the swings of the monstrosity that had been summoned within the Sanctum Martyris. ​ "I am your wrath, your sword…"​ The last to fall, Arialyn… Of all her sisters, Arialyn had felt like a true sister, not one of duty or familiarity, but of blood… Valtria was only a sister of battle because she had been found by Arialyn, when she was nothing more than a tiny, terrified soul begging on the streets of Ophelia VII after her parents had passed enforcing the Imperium's rule… Her memories of clawing at the gates of the Convent Sanctorum were vague, but Arialyn's kindness was always there, almost from her earliest memory… and she was gone. Her final gift to Valtria was her sword, a finely balanced longsword that was far, far older than its wielder, like most power swords, it sliced through flesh and daemonic sinew alike without resistance.. Even now, Valtria was turning it over idly within her grip, hoping something would leap from the dark just so she could have something to occupy her mind other than the deaths of sisters. ​ "I am the hand of the emperor, allow me to drag into the light, your enemies, both from within and without."​ The entire system of Ophelia was a place of worship, but Ophelia IV was a graveyard reserved for saints, they were, of course, cities upon it's surface, but almost all of these were built to maintain the graves of the honoured dead… The sisters stationed upon Ophelia IV had come to call the catacombs, dungeons and tunnels that winded their way down into the planets crust as 'The Shadows' the steps down to it were seemingly endless, Valtria had been descending for almost an hour now, leaving behind the screams and gunshots that haunted the surface only to be replaced with the occasional wet drip against stonework, or the groaning of ancient mechanisms shifting in the darkness. Finally reaching the bottom of the vast staircase, Valtria's helmet struggled to adjust to the absoluteness of the dark ahead. Valtria didn't pause at the all-encompassing blackness of the catacombs. Although her steps were tentative, not out of fear for the arch enemy that she knew was taking refuge somewhere within the murky, ever-shifting shadows… She was well aware of the passage of time that had ravaged the catacombs, many of which were millennia old; a false step could send one plummeting down an unseen abyss to join the dead that slumbered here. The thoughts of ancient Terran myths crossed through Valtria's mind as her prayer beads were released from her grip, those that entered into ancient underworld and innfernal domains of demons and damnation.. It wasn't the first time she had ventured into the shadows, but being here alone reminded her of why almost all depictions of hell were presented as large caverns of lava and rock. The thought also reminded her that in almost all myths of the underworld, no one escaped without a guide. Valtria made her peace with that fate quickly. The source of the Arch-Enemy's strength lied somewhere in this maze of bones and rock, she would destroy it; escape afterwards was optional. Pausing at a junction of tombs, Valtria glanced at a stack of femurs which formed a rough arrow pointing into the darkness, she knelt for a moment to examine them, fearing she may have just been seeing signs where they were none.. But bones defiled like this… The remains of multiple people used to form a crude sign was unmistakable, she continued onwards. Finding more and more of these horrific signs of bone stacked up and nailed into the aging stonework. The stonework of the corridor eventually gave way to the heavy darkness, for a moment all Valtria could see before her was an endless abyss… Of course it was not so… Merely a massive expanse, some kind of lost temple or tomb complex that was shrouded from her gaze… She hesitated at it's precipice before ghost sounds emanated from the breathing dark, the fleeting whispers of men and women scuttering in the darkness. For a moment, she thought it may have been a trick of her mind. Then she saw one, a man, hunched over and rushing as fast as his malnourished legs could carry him… The sister was an unmoving statue in the darkness, and the man clearly hadn't recognised her murky form. Instead of calling out, she merely followed after him, following at such a distance that her bootsteps could be dismissed as the groaning of the old catacombs and the lights of her visor could be consumed by the shadows. Stalking him through the inky darkness, her unknowing guide led her onto a catwalk that overlooked the vast room… the levels below her were bathed in light: thousands of candles, fluorescent lights, and loitering servo-skulls bathed the expansive tomb in golden light… It must have been fifty stories tall, perhaps more… But darkness engulfed any hope of seeing where the ceiling ended… The floor, though… She realised that the walkway she was standing on circled the edge of the room, and multiple staircases branched off it, all ending at the center of the chamber, which was filled with a dark liquid that shimmered in the candlelight. it was akin to a small underground lake… Perhaps some kind of aquifer that was breached when constructing the catacombs all those years ago, at the lakes center was an arch, well… It must've been an arch at one point, although most of the corner stones that had made up the stonework had eroded and fallen away… leaving two ancient pillars standing within the water… Almost like a gateway, surely a metaphorical one to represent the dead passing into the emperor's embrace... Surely. In her curiosity, Valtria's unwitting guide had slunk back into the murky darkness of the chamber. The sister seemed far more concerned with exploring the room… The candles, the desecrated remains of saints… The lake of pitch blackness… All signs of a cult dedicated to the primordial annihilator, the arch-enemy… She descended one of the staircases leading down to the 'lake' before she paused at the sounds of murmured prayers on the far side of the room. Sliding her sword into it's sheathe, Valtria pulled her bolter by it's sling hanging from her shoulder as the group entered the room… A group of sisters with a man at their centre. "Stop!" Valtria's booming voice carried across the chamber, slightly distorted by the vox transmitter within her helmet… It took her a moment to speak again after glancing between the sisters, they were the same order as her… Of the Martyred lady, she spoke a challenge in high Gothic. "Noli timere." One of the sisters within the inquisitors' retinue called back, her bolter raised on Valtria's form. "Feruntur Lucem."​ Valtria seemed to relax, if only slightly, before she made her way further down the steps, calling out to the group on the other side of the room as she did. "Who is the man you escort…? A priest, or a lost soul?" None of the sisters seemed intent on answering her question, not willing to speak for the inquisitor.

​