M. 40-159, Segmentum Tempestus, Davros System, planet Davros Secundus (Hive World)

…

Marak hive burned.

From his vantage point, high up in one of the city's many starscrapers, the hunter watched as the fires spread. They had started in the slums, where the cult troops had been driven after a series of decisive defeats against imperial forces. Plans were being made for a final cleansing sweep of the tunnel-like slums of the city, where the cults had made their stronghold, when the Cannoness of the Order of the Burning Wreath had received a 'vision from the emperor', which compelled her to dispatch a flamer-armed strike force to cleanse the hive of the heretical filth. The push was effective, and hundreds cultists were burned in the holy fires. However, such was the zealous fervor of the sisters, the fires spread uncontrolled through the slums, forcing thousands of other cultists out of their holes, in a makeshift offensive that broke through the surprised imperial lines. Emboldened by this 'offensive', rebel cells formerly thought squashed surged out of hiding across the hive, attacking weapons depots and bases behind the main line, and turning what had been an easy, if not clean, victory into a desperate struggle for control of the city.

How, he watched and waited from his vantage point, high above the streets of the manufactorum district. His primary orders were to thin the hordes, to hunt the groups of cultists who left the safety of the main groups, like snipers and sabotage teams. His secondary orders were to strike the fear of the emperor into the cults, through assassination and terror tactics. He had just eliminated a sniper team that was seeking to set up in the star scraper, their blood still staining his gauntlets. Now, he took this opportunity to rest briefly before continuing in his hunt.

As he listened to the ambient sounds of the city, of gunfire, artillery, and fires, he picked up something out of place. It sounded like a group of people, at least twenty of them, running. It came from below and to the right of where he perched, and he scanned that area for the source of the sound. As he strained his hearing, he picked up other noises mixed in with the pounding of running feet; shouting and screaming, and the cracks of small arms fire.

There He thought.

His quarry had just come into a wide boulevard below him, and he could clearly see what was happening. A lone Adeptus Sororita was fleeing from a mob of cultists, and from the looks of things she could use some help.

Soundlessly, he slipped from his perch and began to follow.

…

Sister Amanda Williams ran for her life. In her right hand she held her bolt pistol, its magazine half empty, and in her left, her combat blade. Mag-locked to her back was her meltagun, the anti-armor weapon marking her out as her squads' special-weapons expert. Her power armor was whirring as it propelled her down the street, the servos lending her extra speed. A warning rune appeared on the lens of her helmet, warning her that her power pack was running low, and needed time to recharge.

Time she did not have at the moment.

Behind her was a mob of thirty or more chaos cultists, armed with autoguns, autopistols and a wide variety of crude melee weapons. They bayed and screamed and howled vile profanities after her, snapping off shots from their crude firearms that pinged off her armor. Most of the cultists were dressed in little more than rags, although a few wore stolen flak armour. At their head was a massive brute of a man, at least seven feet tall, dressed in the robes of a manufactorum overseer, and wielding a massive eviscerator chainblade.

She pounded down the streets of Marak hive, jumping over craters left by mortar strikes and dodging the burning wrecks of civilian transports. Up ahead, the rubble of a collapsed hab blocked the street, so she made a sharp turn down a side alley, firing a burst from her pistol at her pursuers as she made the turn. Most of the bolts flew wide, but two impacted a cultist armed with an autogun right in the chest, the mass-reactive shells blowing his torso apart in a brilliant spray of crimson. The other cultists let out angry shouts and followed the sorita down the alley.

The narrow side street was clogged with garbage and rubble. Amanda had little trouble avoiding these obstacles, but she could hear her pursuers crashing into the dumpsters, slowing them down even further. She smiled behind her helmet, increasing her speed to put even more distance between her and the heretics. It rankled Amanda's honor to run from these heathens, but her sister superior had always taught that to waste your life in a battle you cannot win it a sin against the Emperor. So, she ran, following the twisting streets of the alley, looking for a turn of where she could lose her pursuers for good. But all the side passages were blocked by rubble, so she was forced to follow the same street. It twisted and turned, and soon she was hopelessly lost.

She rounded another corner and stopped dead in her tracks. No she thought. Oh dear Emperor NO!

Before her was the end of the alley, a solid wall of concrete that sealed her off from escape. Amanda turned to run back the way she came, hoping she could find a turnoff she missed before, but stopped. She could hear the sounds of her pursuers coming closer once again.

She was trapped.

…

The hunter ran across the rooftops, his power armor propelling him at a speed that seemed impossible for a being of his size. He jumped over the short expanses of alleyways, and used the bulky jump pack he wore to launch himself across the larger thoroughfares. He had lost sight of his prey during his descent from the starscraper, and was now tracking the route the mob had taken in their chase after the sorita. But now, the trail had seemed to go cold.

Then, his hyper-sensitive sense of smell picked up the metallic scent of recently spilt blood. He followed the smell to the body of a cultist, who had been blown apart by bolt shells. Nearby, by the entrance to an alleyway, he found a cluster of spent bolter casings, likely from a bolt pistol.

The hunter rose from his crouch, triggered is jump pack and shot back to the rooftops. He had found the trail again.

He just hoped that he found the sorita before the cultists did.

…

Amanda knelt behind her makeshift barricade and mouthed a player to the Emperor. The barricade was made from a pair of overturned waste cans and a chunk of masonry blasted from a building at some point in the war. She had her meltagun propped on the barricade, and her bolt pistol was reloaded and ready at her side. The melta, being an anti-tank weapon, would only do for one shot, but that shot, at this range, was guaranteed to be at least one kill. She closed her eyes and listened for the sounds of her foes, getting closer and closer.

She vowed that they would not take her alive.

The ex-overseer was the first of the band to round the corner, and found himself looking down the barrel of a meltagun. He reacted quickly, and threw himself to the ground.

That action extended his life by about two minutes, but brought the lives of three of his followers to an abrupt end.

Amanda pulled the trigger on the melta as a trio of club-wielding cultists rounded the corner, occupying the space the overseer had recently vacated. A beam of blue-white energy the heat of a star's core blasted from the barrel of the weapon and struck the chest of one of the three cultists. His entire upper body was vaporized in an instant, leaving only a pair of legs charred at the top to fall to the ground. His companions suffered a worse fate. The beam passed within two feet of their bodies, and the intense heat of the energy blast caused their cloths to instantly catch fire, along with the skin on the sides of their bodies nearest the beams. They collapse to the ground, screaming in pain. Amanda dropped her melta and drew her bolt pistol as more cultists rounded the corner. Screaming her hatred at their accursed forms, she unloaded the magazine into the crowd. The bolts impacted flesh with lethal force, their explosions washing surrounding cultists in blood. Before this fusillade, the survivors fell back, hiding around the corner. One of them leaned around the edge of the cover to fire his autogun at the sister, but the solid rounds simply bounced off of her blessed armor and she blew his head off with a bolt shell between the eyes.

Sensing a lull in the engagement, Amanda dropped behind her cover to reload her pistol. She figured she had a few seconds, but she had made a crucial mistake. She had forgotten the overseer.

…

The former overseer pushed himself off the ground, making sure to remain safely behind the dumpster she had used as cover from the melta blast. He looked back at the entry to the alley in time to see one of his minions lose his head to a bolt shell. He peeked around his cover and saw their sorita prey duck down behind her barricade. Seeing his chance, he groped around in a satchel on his hip, quickly finding the shape he was looking for. He pulled out a pineapple shaped Adeptus Astartes fragmentation grenade, which he had stolen from a supply crate he had found while scrounging the city before his fall to chaos. He pulled the pin on the explosive, waited a moment, and then hurled the lump of metal with all his might at the wall behind the barricade, ducking behind his cover.

…

Amanda had just reloaded her pistol when the grenade thumped to the ground and rolled between her feet. Her eyes widened, and she threw herself away from the grenade as it detonated. She was mid-air at the moment of detonation, and the shockwave threw her into the wall of the alley. Her helmeted head cracked against the wall, smashing her skull against the inside of her helmet. Her armor protected her from the shrapnel, but the pressure wave, combining with her head injury, threatened to drop her into unconsciousness. Blackness clouded the edges of her vision, and she fought hard to remain conscious. Amanda knew that if she passed out, she would be helpless, at the mercy of these heretics. She reached for her bolt pistol, but it was nowhere to be found. She must have lost it as the grenade went off, she realized. Then, all the strength suddenly went out of her. Her last thought as she slipped into oblivion was that her sister superior would be very cross that she lost another bolt pistol.

…

The overseer peeked over the top of his dumpster after the explosion, wary of the fact that the sister might still be dangerous, despite having just taken a grenade at almost point blank range. His caution was unnecessary though, as when the dust cleared, he saw the battle sister sprawled on the ground, leaning against the wall of the alley, completely motionless. A malicious grin broke out on his face, and he threw his head back and roared his victory to the smoke-filled skies. He looked to his followers, who still waited warily at the mouth of the alley, and gave them a grin as well, causing several to let out whoops of celebration and congratulations to their leader. He waved a few of them towards the sorita, confident that her armor would prevent them from mishandling his prize on the way back to camp. He bent and retrieved his eviscerator from the ground, thumbing the activation rune for a moment to make sure that the motor had not been damaged by the melta blast.

Suddenly, several loud cracks echoed out from above the overseer. At the same moment, the three men he had sent after the sorita exploded in clouds of blood and bone. He let out a surprised exclamation, and looked skyward for the source of the shots (he realized that those were what the cracks were). He looked up in time to see a shape drop into the gap between the roofs at the top of the alley…nearly twelve stories above him. He gasped as the shape dropped to the ground, its massive weight cracking the pavement on its landing, and sending up a plume of dust which blinded the cultists momentarily.

When the dust cleared, they beheld the massive form of an Imperial Space Marine, one of the emperor's angels of death.

The men stood, shocked, as the marine straitened from his crouch to stand at his full eight foot height. He was clad in a suit of mark VII power armor with a the bulky form of a jump pack attached to the back, painted electric blue everywhere but the left shoulder pad, the greaves, and the vambraces, which were black. On the black shoulder pad there was the image of a dragon, painted in white, and the marines armored hands were stained with blood. In his hands he held a pair of bolt pistols, which he now holstered. He scanned the group with through the blood red lenses on his helmet and from a vox grill on his helm a deep, grating voice emerged.

"If you traitors want the sorita" he said, "you'll have to get through me."

The overseer was, for a moment, cowed by these words, spoken by a being that was spoken of in mythic terms by the people of the imperium, an empire he had forsaken, and he was tempted to throw down his weapon and flee before this being, this demigod.

Then, his hand brushed the tattoo he had carved into his forearm so many months ago, when he had forsworn the light of the emperor, and thrown in his lot with the chaos gods, one in particular. He ran his fingers over the symbol, a strange mixture of the male and female symbols, the sigil of Slannesh, his patron. He felt his courage return and he pressed the activation rune of his evicerator, and it roared to life. He raised the weapon above his head, and screamed "For the glory of lord Slannesh!"

Then, he charged.

The marine changed his stance ever so slightly at the overseer's words, but the crazed man did not notice, so caught up was he in his fervor. He brought the evicerator down in a vicious overhead chop, putting all of his strength into the blow, hoping to fell his opponent in one terrible blow. The marine sidestepped the strike and smashed the overseer's forearms with a flat handed chop.

The man's bones snapped like twigs.

He let out a horrific scream of pain, his blade dropping from nerveless fingers. The marine grabbed the crippled man by the throat and lifted him into the air. He brought the traitor's face to mere inches from his faceplate, and the two beings locked eyes.

"You have betrayed the emperor, the imperum, and the people of this world." He said. "For this crime, the only punishment is death."

And, with barely an ounce of effort, the marine tore the overseers head from his shoulders with a loud POP!

Blood sprayed from his neck like water from a fountain, splattering all over the walls the ground, and the marine, coating his blue armor and making the marine even more menacing. He dropped the corpse of the cultist leader, and began to walk towards the cultists who remained, who stood in shocked silence at the death of their leader.

…

Black Dragons Librarian Lukas Ryzle looked at the remaining cultists with a mixture of disgust and pity. Disgust at the fact these pitiful beings had turned their back on the great Emperor of Terra, and thrown this world into turmoil because of their own selfishness. Pity because of the fear he saw in their eyes at what he had just done, and for what he was about to do to those who remained. Lukas flexed a pair of muscles very few other beings in the universe possessed, and a pair of bones slid from of sheaths in his forearms and out specially made slots in his vambraces. His bone blades slid into place, a foot and a half of razor-edged, iron-hard bone extending beyond his fists. Blades in place, Lukas closed his eyes and focused, tapping into the roiling sea of the warp, siphoning of a portion of its eldritch power into himself. He opened his eyes, and they blazed with blue fire, tinting his vision blue as well. He channeled the warp energy into his blades, and they too alit with blue flames. All this had taken mere moments, and he now refocused on the cultists, who were now backing away from the advancing marine, terror visible in their eyes. Lucas felt the familiar anger of his battle rage fall upon him, and he let the feeling fill him, tapping into the rage, but maintaining control nonetheless.

"Now" the librarian growled, "who's first?"

The foremost cultists turned to run, but were held up by the men behind them. Lukas leapt upon the confused mass with a bestial growl, and the slaughter began.

…

Amanda's return to consciousness was very sudden and confusing. One moment, her mind was a peaceful abyss, floating through black nothingness. The next, her eyes snapped open, returning her to the waking world. Her body jerked as her memories returned, and she looked around frantically, sure that she was a captive of the repulsive slanneshi cultists. She was not bound, so she assumed she was not a captive, bit her vision was weirdly distorted. She popped the release on her helmet and pulled it off her head, gagging slightly as the acrid air of Davros entered her lungs. She looked over her helmet for damage, and found a piece of shrapnel lodged in the helm, just above the left lens. She mag-locked her helmet to her belt and stood up, taking in the alley for the first time since awakening, and let out a small scream, backing against the wall.

The alley was a charnel house.

There was blood splattered everywhere, and the body parts of at least four of the cultists scattered haphazardly on the ground and on the dumpsters. The most intact body was that of the overseer, and he was still missing his head, which appeared to have been torn off.

Amanda stood there in shock. She was not unused to seeing violent acts, and their aftermath. Hell, she had helped create many of them. Bit this…brutality, this scale of sheer violence, was appalling even to her.

What kind of monster could have done this? She wondered, and why did it leave ME untouched?

Then, movement at the mouth of the alley caught her eye.

A cultist, missing one of his arms, stumbled around the corner and collapsed to the ground. Amanda reached for her pistol, but found her holster empty. She remembered she had lost her grip on it in the grenade explosion. But when she looked in the cultist's eyes, she saw not hatred, or anger, or charnel lust, but a pleading cry for help.

Before the woman could react to the man, a huge shape appeared. It was no more than a red blur, and it scooped the man up and slammed him into the wall at the mouth of the alley. It paused for a moment, and in that moment she saw a massive brute clad in blue power armor that was absolutely drenched in blood. She saw cerulean light shining from behind the lenses of his combat helm. Witch she thought with disgust. Then, the blade on his arm, which she had taken at a glance for a lightning claw, lit up with eldritch fire, drawing her eye, and she saw that the blade was made of bone, and protruded from the monster's arm. Mutant. The beast let out a vicious growl, and shoved its bone blade into the gut of the cultist. The man let out a wail of pain as he was lit up from the inside while the warpfire consumed him from the inside out.

Amanda was suddenly seized by a zealous hatred, and wanted nothing more than to destroy this abomination. She looked around for a better weapon than her combat blade, and her eyes seized upon her fallen melta. She dove for the weapon, seized it, and quickly checked its function. Finding it undamaged, she turned on the monster.

…

Lukas tore his blade from the charred corpse of the final cultist, his rage fading. He also released his connection to the warp, the fire in his eyes dimming and snuffing out. He turned to the alley where he had left the unconscious sorita, to find her standing behind her barricade, meltagun leveled at his chest. She was un-helmeted, and her short brown hair blew slightly in the breeze. He could see religious fervor burning in her eyes.

"Burn the witch!" She snarled.

"No, wait!" Lukas shouted, but it was too late. With a whoosh, a blast of energy shot out of the melta, and Lukas' vision became filled with light and heat.