Warhammer 40K: Master of Mankind Excerpt

Transcript

Orders sire The emperor raised his sword in a two-handed grip as his knuckles tightened the geography of circuitry ignited among the blades length Splitting electrical fire and wreathing the sword's length in flame He didn't speak He didn't look at any of his warriors The sword came down The web boy caught fire Shapes raged in the flames shadows and suggestions doing battle with the demons their fiery forms indistinct and ever-changing the fire-borne avatars of the fallen ten thousand knee-deep of psychic fire and thrusting with the lances of flame The silhouettes of space marines that betrayed a dead of istvan Bearing axes and blades and claws half-seen sigils of slaughtered legions obscured by the ash of their blackened armor a giant among giants Its great hands bared his ready as it seared forth and forward At the crest of the tidal fire the tenth son of a dying empire so briefly reborn in his father's immolating wrath Demons burnt in their thousands Their atheric flesh seared from their false bones white flame hollowed from the sword in corrosive purifying radiance It crusaded and thrashing waves from each fall of the emperor's blade To look at him was to go blind to stand before him was to die Torrents of chemical fire marked Position that to ra's left Ra could hear the draconic roar of incendium pikes Burning the still thrashing creatures that had fallen beneath the blades of the custodian's first rank The ten thousand and their golden king were shinned deep in ash the smoky specters of demonic entities Flailing as they were swallowed by the emperor's fire The demons that managed to reach the emperor suffered worst of all the strongest most savage of their kind They swung weapons at a man who was no longer there Cleaving through the golden mist that swirled at in his place with thunder cracks of psychic force The golden warlord would appear at the beast's backs his flaming sword already burned in their Spines fire erupted behind their eyes Boiling and bursting them from within their sizzling gore Soaked ra and the custodians closest to their sire Exaltation quickened ra's blood the cures of the weariness that had slowed him He was tired beyond belief Yet that never mattered so little each beat of his still living heart was vengeance Vindication we're winning. He could feel it in the renewed curses and oaths across as the vox as the ten thousand advanced They weren't just holding their ground Whatever genius the emperor had worked in order to stand with them in this final hour had worked Nothing could stand before them The emperor turned to ra Hurling his sword as a spear it lanced over the custodian's shoulder Driving to the hilt in the skull of a creature ra barely even saw before it was reduced to burning sludge In a flare sun-drenched mist The blade was back in the emperor's hand spinning falling killing and the emperor advanced The reptilian canine leapt at him only to rip through the air where he had been standing It gurgled a molten blood as the emperor's sword Manifested within its throat The warlord clutched in in place a second longer before ripping it free and moving on Still the enemy came a tide a flood Ra stole glances back to the wraithbone getaway so Courageous against the mechanicum's machinery watching robbed unifiers passing into the blue mist escorted by packs of the last surviving silent sisters Soon enough only the ten thousand remained at their master's side.