The Throne Room
... GIVE IN TO THAT VOICE THAT CALLS IN THE BLACK OF NIGHT...
...GIVE IN TO THE CLAWS SCRATCHING AT THE CORNERS OF YOUR MIND...
...ABSOLVE YOURSELF OF THE LIMITS THEY HAVE PUT UPON YOU ...
YOU ARE AN ANIMAL
YOU ARE A MONSTER
YOU ARE CHAOS
And as with all things, it continues in war.
Eliphas smiled. He could not stop smiling as he could feel the weight of a thousand souls lift off the back of his mind. Even in his state as the Inheritor of Blackheart's Throne, Mephisto's spell had effected him just as it did the rest of the chosen. That was cause enough for the Dark Apostle to see the dearest Mother undo his works. But there was no time to celebrate and mock. Now, there was no time at all.
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"Thank you, dearest Mother. May the Four bless you in your endeavors."
"But truthfully... you should have believed me from the start. You all should have listened to my words, dearest children. Perhaps, then, you would've been spared this nonsense war between the whore-Goddess and Blackheart's mutts."
Eliphas' voice changed. The supposed 'strain' from containing the throne's power vanished. It took a more joyous, enraptured tone, as he forced his hands against the side of the concrete seat and slowly rose to a stand. The Inheritor's from towered over the Chosen in the room as he turned his gaze down towards them.
The storm of empyrean power swirling around Eliphas exploded to a billowing tornado of energy that slowly crept towards the ceiling above him. He wrapped a hand around the Crozius' handle, dragging it in front of himself and planting the eight-pointed star into the concrete before his feet. Insidious whispers filled the air, and nonsensical words peeled back the layer of the Chosen's minds, filling their minds with maddening truths if they didn't plug their ears.
Even if they did so, however,
Eliphas' voice echoed in their mind.
In everyone's mind, no matter where they were.
"Every action you take... every emotion you feel... it is just a fragment of Chaos yearning to be released from the prison of Order imposed upon you all. You all claim to act within their own interests... dreams and ambitions motivated by your heart... but look upon your works and ask yourself if what you're told you want is what you truly desire. The answer? No, I think not."
The Apostle raises his hands to the air, head tilting back to the sky.
"You yearn for Chaos."
The swirling tornado of Warp energy pushes against the top of the ceiling, buckling the ancient stone upward before shattering it entirely. Those standing outside of Blackheart's fortress bears witness to faint streaks of indigo light beginning to streak across Hell's burnished skyline. The faint lights hadn't done anything but fill the sky with their dark markings. Someone, somewhere, was doing something - and the streaks were originating from Blackheart's fortress.
Suddenly, pieces of thin air began to split open, and arcs of warp lightning slammed into the black, ashy ground of Hell, obliterating those pitiful souls that happened to be standing nearby, leaving smoking craters in their wake. As the ground had begun to buckle and shudder beneath the weight of some unknowable force, structures began to slowly rise from these craters - icons fashioned from solid black stone and metal, depicting an eight-pointed star of Chaos.
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"You hear the voices too, don't you? The song that calls from the black of the night? The claws that scratch at the corners of your mind? You surely can't deny it any longer, my brothers and sisters. You've been lied to. The Goddess has lied to you. Blackheart has lied to you. They led you here to die. You just number in this pathetic war, aren't you? Soldiers to be added to the casualty."
Eliphas the Inheritor lowered his head, slowly stepping forward off the throne platform. His crimson cape billowed behind him with every shuddering step he took. Something behind him began to occur - a transformation. Blackheart's former throne began to twist inward like a living thing. The stone took on a skin-like color and quivered. It began to breathe and twitch, and shudder.
"But now... you have nothing to fear. I can offer you all an escape. You were never meant to be caught in the crossfire, after all."
A red, organic substance crept off Eliphas' footsteps, spreading along the floor and walls. The entire room shuddered and began to gently melt inwards like clay, deforming into shapes determined by the sharp bony spines that shot out from seemingly random parts of the room. Parts of the fleshy wall quivered and then split open to unblinking, fetid eyeballs.
Twisting inwards like meat, an icon etched itself into the floor beneath Eliphas' feet. It softly glowed in a clouded yellow light.
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Eliphas looked upon the icon as he spoke.
"This war has grown far too large for Them to ignore. Fly too close to the sun, and you learn to fear that which lurks in the darkness left behind. They told me that an 'expansion of assets' is in order... that is why I have come here, my children. That is why this irritating conflict must come to an end."
Eliphas lifted an open palm directly above himself, the storm of whispers growing louder and more maddened as he continued.
But then they stopped. And he crushed his fist inward.
"Haha."
"Ha-ahahahah!"
"HAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!"
"HAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAAAAH!"
The skyline ruptured at the beck and call of the Inheritor, as the ripples of Warp energy began to grow in number and intensity. A sharping ringing split the ears of any soul unfortunate to be within the vicinity of the epicenter, but they would have been long dead before they were granted a sight of what came after. The buzzing, the streaks of lightning, and a swirling tornado of energy originating of Blackheart's fortress all began to pool inwards towards a single point of the sky directly above the landscape of Hell.
The ground quakes and shudders. Chunks of concrete structures built by Blackheart's demons collapsed upon themselves in billowing clouds of debris that were blown into the air as a result of their destruction. Deep cracks, at least five feet wide, appeared in the crust beneath the unfortunate souls' feet, many Fellowship soldiers being sent hurtling into the depths screaming. Debris began to drift into the air and swirl around the point in the sky where much of the energy had coagulated, forming a smaller cyclone of concrete, brimstone, and steel lifted from the sundered plains of Hell into its brown, ashy atmosphere.
And then.
The very sky to tore itself open.
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The air shrilled and screamed in a chorus of tormented souls and broiling, thundering, earth-splitting clouds of psychic energy. Amaranthine colors spilled out across the landscape of Hell, consuming it in a miasma of Chaos beckoned from the depths of the Immaterium, originating from a swirling vortex of shrieking energy hanging over the dimension. A maddening vision of a sort ultimately indescribable seized Hell in an icy grip, consuming it in a levy of abhorrent visions of a place far beyond this uncertain veil, a place so subsumed in the unfathomable essence of chaos that what it truly was twisted at every microcosm of every second.
The Battlefield & Outside Areas
The approach to Blackheart's fortress was quickly subsumed in chaos as the ground and sky were consumed in a horrific storm of psychic energy. Regardless of what the Fellowship or Blackheart's remaining forces had done to escape the torrent of energy, the air around then shrieks as purple rifts suddenly tore open around them.
BOOM BOOM, BOOM!
Bullets soared out from the rifts and clapped into several Fellowship soldiers, blowing them apart in an instant. After a moment of sustained gunfire, hulking silhouettes began to silently file out from the portals. One of them lurched forward and smashed fallen Goddessian soldier's skull into the dirt, planting an icon of a Chaos star beside the corpse.
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The entities were humanoid in appearance, towering over the common man and encased in fleshy, crimson armor similar in appearance to Eliphas the Inheritor. Heavy rasps escaped their helmets as they lumbered onto the battlefield in small squads, stopping for a moment to take in the stunning silence of their prey before slamming fresh clips into their block-like rifles and beginning to unload on anything that wasn't them.
Small arms fire futilely deflected off their armor. Anything that got too close was met a brutal end by the marines as they gouged out abdomens and legs with cruel, sword-like chainsaws clipped to their belts. Attempts to communicate with them were met with maddened gibbering and more gunfire, more violence.
The only option was a retreat. Communications across Hell seemed to indicate that these 'chaos marines' were appearing all amidst the swirling energy-consuming the sky, and they were eradicating anything that didn't run away.
@Capri @Jackythejack @Raynar Saassin @Takumi @Minerva @York @Sark
The Wreck
Through the intensity of their fight, Urien and his opponents only now began to notice the Chaos outside as chunks of steel collapsed from the chamber's roof as a result of the thundering quakes. Suddenly, the walls began to whine under a buffet of heavy banging from something outside. A visible dent suddenly juts from the wall. The banging continues for a moment until a spindly pink fist manages to puncture the steel plating.
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The steel hole is suddenly flooded with movement as several creatures resembling balls of pink flesh with teeth, horns, spindly limbs, and eyes began to invade the chamber. The daemons gargled words in some unknowable language as they leaped over the remains of the glass roof and skittered along the walls and ceiling like spiders, before dropping to the floor and lunging towards the nearest thing that wasn't them.
Urien was abruptly buffeted by a number of these creatures, as they maintained a distance from him and instead pelted the man with small balls of warp flame. Attacking the creatures proved futile that they seemed to ignore the pain and the mortal laws of damage. However, they were relatively easy to avoid... and the large opening in the ceiling was a prime escape point.
@Yun Lee @Lucky @Sark
***
The armored hulk approached his throne once more, stepping up atop the platform and turning to look at the Chosen in the room with him. The swirling vortex of power surrounding made it difficult to approach for any meaningful attack. He stood upon the platform, taking his works in silence and wrapping his hands around the pommel of his Crozius.
Once again, his voice intruded upon the minds of the Chosen - all Chosen.
"Let the galaxy burn."
@Jeremi @Sark @Takumi @Raynar Saassin