And they shall know no fear

by Naroe_Clan

Chapter 4: monsters and mourning

Author's Note:

Arachnophobe warning. Stay away, many spiders ahead. For about three lines of dialogue.

After a few minutes of thinking about what I would do next, now that I've been banished from Equestria, I remember a place I can be safe. I hadn't been there for years before I was petrified, but it should still be a good place to be for the foreseeable future.

With that in mind, I float through the immaterium seeking my home. I originally made the place as a fallback location if I was sent away by the royal sisters after revealing myself fifteen hundred years ago.

I find it rather quickly, since it has some presence in the immaterium due to a few of the pieces of technology that are within it.

I pull myself into what used to be my bedroom, still somewhat depressed. As soon as I actually look around myself I freeze. Once my brain starts processing what I'm seeing, I can only stare in disturbed awe and yell “HOW CAN THERE BE SO MANY SPIDERS?! This place was hermetically sealed! There shouldn't even be air in here but OH GOD-EMPEROR THE SPIDERS!”

There are no visible surfaces through the layers of webs. The webs also cross thickly though the air, in some places thicker than most normal ropes. And throughout the white webs, thousands of black spots move everywhere.

I waste no time in reaching my mind into the immaterium. I quickly start making a shape from the nothingness around me, forming it into something to take care of the phobia-inducing thing around me.

Back in the material world, it would look like I just pulled a odd-looking gun from nothingness, its basic shape just appearing and becoming clear in less than a second.

I finish creating the flamer, push a button on the side to ignite the pilot light and yell “BURN XENOS SCUM!” before pulling the trigger and filling the room around me with white-hot fire.

The webs burn into nothingness in mere seconds. The room around me remains alight due to the lasting nature of burning promethium. I breathe heavily through my suits rebreather, and walk towards the door out of the room intending to purge the rest of the base of infestation.

I press the button to the side of the door, thankful that imperial technology was built to last as the door slides up into the ceiling. The fire is immediately extinguished as all of the remaining atmosphere in the room rushes through the doorway, almost pulling me with it.

As the lights in the main area of my base start lighting up, I see no webs here, but I do hear lots of hissing as air enters the room behind me from a large hole in the wall that I didn't see before due to the webs.

I fully enter the main area and close the door behind me, cutting off the hissing and muffling some of the sounds from systems turning on around me.

This room is decent sized, with metal walls, floor and ceiling. There's nothing here at the moment, but I remember using it as a staging area for war machines many years ago. There are many doors of various sizes leading to areas containing all of the different machines I created over the years and rooms for my use and that would have been used by other space marines if my program had been successful.

I feel a thud through the floor and start hearing air being pumped into the room through vents in the ceiling. After a few seconds, a feminine voice intones “Welcome holy astartes. Command?”

I look at one of the speakers situated about the room and respond with “Command: systems check.”

I walk towards a medium-sized door for a few seconds before I hear a response of “Power nominal. Atmosphere generators nominal. Manufactories offline, ready for startup. Harvesters offline, ready for startup. Fuel depot offline, ready for startup. Servitor bay at zero percent capacity.”

I stop in front of the door and sigh, immensely sad. I know I shouldn’t have expected a miracle, but I had hoped...

I lean my flamer against the wall next to me and push the button to open the door to look contemplatively at what is within.

I see rows upon rows of individual pony skeletons, fused with machinery of every purpose imaginable. Every skeleton is still standing due to the wires and metal supports running throughout their bones. Before me stands every servant I created, long since rotted away.

Due to the sight before me, I remember my horror upon first summoning forth a tank from the immaterium. It came forth with a full crew minus a commander. That crew was made from one of the most numerous pieces of technology in the imperium of man: servitors.

Servitors are made for several reasons, but what they are is a person who has been lobotomized and had most of their body replaced with machinery so that they can better suit whatever purpose they will serve. It is beyond barbaric, but in the imperium is considered necessary.

For whatever reason, whenever I summon forth any machine that requires more than one person to operate, pony-bodied servitors fill every space that I myself would not fill.

At first, I refused to summon anything more, but then I resolved to learn exactly where these servitors came from. It took almost a month for me to summon enough scanning devices that I could examine those first servitors comprehensively.

Every one of those devices added up to an oddly comforting answer: I had made the entire body of the servitors. I did not take them from somewhere else, or worse, kill a random pony and change them. After that I resolved to not cripple myself on behalf of the nearly mindless automatons, but I would also treat them with respect.

In the current time, I walk towards the closest dead servitor and carefully pick it up, carrying it through the main area and into yet another chamber. This chamber is massive beyond most comprehension, and is made of row upon row of large metal containers in racks reaching up a couple hundred feet and off into the immense distance.

I walk past many closed columns of containers until I reach an open one, whereupon I lay the body within. I say “I inter your form into this metal granted by the omnissiah, for your service is over and you must now rest. Goodbye my loyal servant.” I then salute as I press the button which closes the coffin and raises the next into place.

I remain saluting for a couple seconds before dropping my arm and moving back to the servitor chamber. It'll take me several days to bury them all, but I have a duty, and it shall be fulfilled.

Comments

[Mr Dorito]

Dammit, I'm fucking scared of spiders. Read the warning in the beginning of chapter 4 and now I'm scared to read it.

[snowblind]

When i think of spiders.
static.fjcdn.com/gifs/Kill_f46b07_292498.gif Contains spooky scary spider.
and how i react.
s.quickmeme.com/img/b7/b78b898e76412421843ac0a07f484fbd22b347ac7b643629fb935200032c6bd0.jpg

[paladinwolf]

hmmm, Haven't been home in 1,500 years. What do we know about it?
1.bp.blogspot.com/-dcpEM_iK2S8/Uu0ZP_q1aTI/AAAAAAAAGWs/3RHwoPaZbH4/s1600/Gorman.png
well, lets go check it out!
resources1.news.com.au/images/2012/06/04/1226382/468953-harry-potter-spiders.jpg
well then..
i.imgur.com/a5rf0wu.gif

done!

[Naroe_Clan]

6026932 *tries not to laugh maniacally. does not succeed* MWAHAHAHAHA!
but in all seriousness, due to how short the chapters are, it's only creepy crawlies for a moment which is there in order to introduce Chaplain's abilities.

question: would people like shorter chapters more frequently, or longer chapters more spaced out? I'm gonna try to make the whole story the best I can (make of that what you will) but I'm wondering what people think. and by shorter chapters I mean less than 2k words like I've been mostly writing so far.

[Naroe_Clan]

counterpoint to spiders being terrifying:
learnsomething.tips/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/jumping-spider-waterdrop-hats-uda-dennie-5.jpg

[ginnight]

just kept on reading everything from the beginning interesting story so far always something Warhammer universe had so much potential but was messed by some messed up by politics I guess that's why they call it grimdark I really hope I can see you continue updating
by the way is your character Emperor of mankind level or close to it just curious

[ginnight]

if I remember correctly there is a story about spider ponies on this site and not ponies that have spider powers I mean eight legged spider morph ponies now there's your cute and cuddly this is actually an edit after I read all the comments

[Naroe_Clan]

6052791 warhammer 40k is the origin of the term grimdark.

he and the emperor have powerful abilities that aren't really able to be compared to each other because they're usable in different ways. the emperor is stated to be the most powerful psycher to ever exist in 40k canon, but I don't think he is stated to be able create objects from nothingness using those abilities. however, in a stand-up fight the emperor could just plain win due to overwhelming power.

[Techpriest Eh]

I have found the holy grail!

[Naroe_Clan]

6053028
...
...
...
thanks? I didn't think it was THAT good. but yeah, thanks!

[Techpriest Eh]

6054099 I've been looking for one of these Space marine displaced for a long time m80. In fact I've been searching for a regular human gets sent to equestria as a spehss mehrene for a long time.

[ginnight]

>6052898 sorry about the garbled text. my voice to text must have changed we had written down well I wasn't paying attention. also I'm curious what group is he affiliated with also are you going to follow the standard format where in bit and pieces other Warhammer40k universe stuff start showing up I mean small pieces not full regiments coming and saying nice planets now it's ours. or heaven forbid the Inquisition shows up and says heresy and EXTERMINATUS the planet. come to think of it for Inquisition that's actually the best case scenario cuz they might just turn Equestria into a research area but those are just my thoughts

[Jarimor]

hope this continues, looks good.

[Brother Uriel]

Spiders? Ha! Nothing but a bug beneath my boot, but, I do enjoy this story, keep on keeping on.

[Naroe_Clan]

6245534 I've been thinking more along the lines of Black Templars. that image was just the best one I could find.

Also: I'm working on the next chapter. I'm just being remarkably lazy and sorta uninspired. It'll be here eventually.

[Bronzer]

To be fair, people who are made servitors are usually guilty of horrific crimes. So terrible that execution is considered too lenient for them. Of course, some people who are made servitors merely pissed off the wrong person or were the victims of misfiled paperwork, but that is surprisingly rare. Most servitors, though, were grown that way by the Mechanicus in large tubes, with only part a brain and without many of their internal organs. Then the cybernetics were added.

[Wir sind verloren]

I walk past many closed columns of containers until I reach an open one, whereupon I lay the body within. I say “I inter your form into this metal granted by the omnissiah, for your service is over and you must now rest. Goodbye my loyal servant.” I then salute as I press the button which closes the coffin and raises the next into place.

Quote: "There is no truth in flesh, only betrayal."
"There is no strength in flesh, only weakness."
"There is no constancy in flesh, only decay."
"There is no certainty in flesh but death."

— Credo Omnissiah