> PonyHammer 40k: Legions At War
>  by Ozone31
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Entry I: Warp War
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

ENTRY BEGINS. MID-LATE 30TH MILLENNIUM. DAWN OF THE AGE OF THE IMPERIUM




The stars. Once they were beacons of hope for Mankind to look upon and dream of new worlds, new ideals and maybe even peace. A mere fraction of these stars had planets orbiting them and a further fraction of that had naturally inhabitable worlds.

This is what had made the Calipsian System special. Four worlds each with a naturally inhabitable climate for humans to live in, abundant in resources and the close proximity of all the planets to each other, made defending the system's core relatively easy. Each world was protected by a vast array of orbital, atmospherical and surface weaponry that decimated any foe who had come to try and take the strategic strong-point in the stars. 

All of this was backed up by the massive fleets of the Eleventh Legiones Astartes force - The Apocalyptians, clad in glazed, void-black armour constructed of Adamantite and Plasteel plates encased in Ceremite. Every member of the Legion had their gauntlets coloured in a royal purple, representing their closeness to the Emperor's Children. Their Legion symbol was a claw of the same colour, with the sharp points dipped in blood red, trailing lines of viscera across a green-skin's ugly maw. They were a well known legion in the northern sectors of Mankind's territories, famous for their impossible combination of Space Wolf savagery and the decorum of the Emperor's Children. Together with the system's Imperial Navy and Guard garrisons, they had successfully defended the small sector of space for a millennia, without a single hostile laying foot, claw or tentacle upon one of its worlds.     

That was until the Scarred Swords came. Calipsian IV had fallen under a tide of matte-green and bolter shells as the Second Legiones Astartes came to the system with only one goal:

To eradicate their brothers and cleanse the galaxy of the Chaos they'd fallen to.

They'd assembled one of the largest star fleets ever seen, for this was not a mission to restore compliance on a renegade world, it was one to destroy a powerful and fully armed fellow Astartes force and the star that they recruited from. A total of six thousand, five hundred and twenty eight war-ships had exited the Warp over Calipsian IV, not including the armada of Imperial Army landing vessels and smaller support ships that had accompanied the mass of ships between the lighter frigate classes and the mighty Battle-Barges. At the forefront of this fleet was the Scarred Swords' Flagship and mobile star fortress - The Excalibur. Thirty-six miles long from dagger-shaped prow to stern and twelve miles across at its widest point, between the massive stabilizer panels that jutted out from the ship's aft section while also being eighteen miles tall - from it's highest spires to its lowest antennae. It was bristling with weapons of all types, from simple macro cannons to powerful lancers and even a number of experimental Volcano Cannons. With a total of three bridges: one in the typical location of the forward aft section, one on the prow atop the bladed front and the third located at the base of the ship's rear section - The Excalibur would never be without a commander.

The Purging Fleet had taken only three months to take and destroy three of the four worlds in the system and was on its way to the core world of the Apocalyptian's home.

"Raigon" a low voice growled, to no one in particular. The voice belonged to the Primarch of the second legion - Furious Storm-Qrow, the Storm Blade. He was speaking not only of the large, blue orb dotted with flat, green continents before him-but also of his traitorous brother.

The planet Calipsian I had been renamed many years before, by The Emperor of Mankind himself, after the Primarch of the eleventh legion of astartes - Malar Raigon, who'd saved the world more times than could be counted from all kinds of threats. The savage Green-Skins, the self-righteous Eldar and even some rebellious colonists, if it could be named, Raigon had fought it off the Calipsian system. It was the memories of these great honours to his name that made Raigon's betrayal all the more painful for the Primarch of the Second Legion.

Qrow stood upon the main bridge of the Excalibur, in front of his golden command throne, clad in a scaled up version of the matte-emerald green power armour that was the Scarred Swords' primary colour. Every Astartes in the legion wore this colour proudly, alongside a secondary colour exclusive to their company within the legion. The First company had shining gold adorning their left greaves, the Sixth had glossed, blood-red right arms and the Tenth all had snow-white helms. It was this individuality within the legion that made them stand out against the more dull legions like the Death Guard and the Imperial fists, to whom the Swords had always been close.

The Purge fleet had now come into visual range of the last Apocalyptian fleet, at the forefront of which was the Hell Hound - Raigon's flagship. Despite being a Battle Barge, this fortress sized capital ship was minuscule in comparison to the Excalibur, it wasn't even as long as the Scarred Swords' flagship's prow was tall.

"Dragoon" Qrow looked to the Sixth company captain who stood next to the 'Master's-Table' holo-display in the centre of the ship's grand bridge. Ozonus Prowl, aka 'Dragoon', was one of the four company captains who acted as their Primarch's closest advisers and were some of the most recognised men in the Scarred Swords legion. Qrow had liked Horus' idea - of The Mournival - so he'd adopted it himself, and created The Beasts of the Storm. Four astartes named after legendary creatures, in service to him The Storm Blade.

Ozonus, the level-headed captain of the Sixth company, was one. The furious monster lizard, the wielder of the tornadoes and gales, Dragoon.

The next was the First company captain - Alatreon Zerith, aka Dranzer the burning phoenix with wings so sharp they could slice steel clean in two. The aggressive, Terminator Armour favouring, Astartes' foul temper was matched by only one other in the whole galaxy, Ezekiel Abaddon. However, unlike the leader of the Lunar Wolves' First company, Dranzer's anger was not out of a simple aggressive nature, but out of a fierce need to protect those who he considered important, which led to a tendency to jump straight to attacking an unknown force to avoid possible betrayal. This all originated from a rather traumatic experience during his infancy - the brutal killing of his entire clan at the hands of the 'so-called benevolent' Eldar and even after centuries of battle as an elite Astartes warrior, the wounds were still as fresh as they were on the day they were cut.

The First captain's quick temper was excellently countered by the third member of the Beasts. Dragoon's twin brother, Stratos Prowl's witty and light-hearted nature was the polar opposite to the hardened First Captain's. 
Within the Legiones Astartes it was almost unheard of for both members of a set of biological twins to be chosen to become Space Marines, let alone have both of them survive the augmentation and harsh training that all initiates must pass to become full Astartes. This had solidified the blood brothers' relationship, bringing them incredibly close and if one were to fall or be injured, the other would be sent into a state of frenzied bloodlust and unstoppable fury. The light-hearted and joking captain of the Tenth company was the wall that stood between Qrow and Dranzer when their aggressive natures came at odds. He represented the fast and savage white tiger of the land, known as Driger. The title suited him, as when he stepped onto the battlefield he became consumed in a maddened bloodlust that proved dangerous for any moving object, alive or not, friend or foe, within his field of vision.

The final beast was the youngest of them, with only about a century of full Astartes-hood under his belt, Teostrum Yaol was considered a real prodigy within the legion. He captained the Eighth company of the Scarred Swords, wearing the company's black left gauntlet with pride. He'd earned the name Draciel, the guardian turtle of the oceans, after defending an orbital station for five days with only a small garrison of Space Marines, against a seemingly infinite number of Orks as the rapacious greenskins laid siege to it in an attempt to break a hole in the Gaium sub-sector's outer edge. He lost many men and the platform had to be destroyed in the end, but he'd made sure the Green-skins had not obtained any of its precious technology or system data and had bought enough time for the Excalibur to warp-in-system and wipe out the Ork pirate fleet. For this he'd been awarded with the rank of Company Captain and a place on Furious' personal council.

All three of these captains were currently elsewhere on the ship. Draciel was on the secondary bridge on the prow of the Excalibur, overseeing the crew there. Dranzer was in the warp core chambers with a detachment of troops from his company, as ever since they'd been told the truth of what lurked in the warp the Scarred Swords had been particularly weary of the device, despite the Mechanicum's assurances of the machine's safety. Driger was located in the Excalibur's main launch bay - a massive area on the underside of the ship's midsection - it was from here that most of the Scarred Swords legion's military forces were launched from as the entire legion (bar from a select few companies) were located and bred here.

"Are we ready to assault Raigon?" Qrow asked, his normally controlled choler was beginning to rise as spending so much time on this starship was driving him stir-crazy. But even though he could normally control his temper and loved to captain a void ship, that didn't mean his wrath was nothing to fear. He was highly skilled with almost all forms of weapon and not even Horus nor the Emperor himself could match his skill with a sword. He snarled beneath his helm at the thought that he would have to turn these skills upon one of his own brothers, with the intent to kill.

Dragoon approached his lord with a data slate clasped in his augmetic right hand. Qrow could never shake the sense of guilt he got whenever he looked at the bionic limb, knowing he'd sent Dragoon to that conflict so recklessly - albeit not without necessity.

"All ships in the fleet's forward strike formation are in range and ready to attack on your orders lord." the captain said without any emotion at all, a tone he'd mastered over the centuries of combat he'd survived. "Or should we wait for the artillery craft and missile destroyers in the rear to be able to fire?"

Qrow looked the man right in the dark red optical lenses of his helm and he could swear he could see the concern in the warrior's sharp eyes. When he'd taken control of the Second legion, he'd introduced a rule that only in situations of complete peace or when acting as diplomats for the Imperium, could his troops remove their helms. It was really just to insure the safety of his men, but he'd also been glad as in his early days as Primarch they had hidden the condescending looks of the veteran troops who believed him to be inadequate. Now, it would seem that even the thick plasteel helms could not hide the expressions of his astartes.

"The ships that are in range, when I give the order to fire, are to do so, but first." He wandered over to the guard rail that separated the platform which his throne sat upon from the rest of the bridge and called. "Tell vox control to hail the Hell Hound! I would have a word with my brother before we end this."

The communications crew set about sending a message to the enemy's flagship. The main bridge of the Excalibur even during piece times was always a place of feverish activity, with serfs and adepts moving hurriedly between the six ascending daises of the heavily compacted war room. Before long, a lone servitor approached the Primarch with a golden box, resting upon a plinth in the husk's mechanical grip. He grabbed the little microphone connected to the box and held it to his helmet's speaker.

"Hear me Raigon!" Qrow roared into the device, almost crushing it in his grasp. The primarch's sudden outburst caused many of the human bridge crew to jump and yelp while even a few of Dragoon's command squad flinched, having never truly heard their father vent in such a way. To Dragoon, however, this was neither new nor surprising. Unfortunately, the Storm Blade's demand was met with a rather surprising and unsatisfactory response, from a voice that was not Raigon's. 

"The Lord of the End is not here at this moment to be spoken to." A weedy, conniving little voice was what he received in response to his demand. "I am the Lord's Equerry - Herlias Craul. May I be of some assistance to you Lord Qrow?"

"I know who you are weasel!" The Primarch snarled, Raigon had the gall to not face him directly in this, the final battle. "WHERE IS HE, WORM?!"

"Now, now Lord, one such as yourself sho-"

"Wrong answer." the Sixth captain sighed.

With a roar of outrage, Qrow crushed the microphone in his grasp, threw the remains (and subsequently the servitor) across the bridge and slammed his fists down upon the steel railing.

"Admiral!"

Lord Admiral Achilles Fyndral was the highest ranking naval officer in the Purge Fleet and one of the most decorated men in the entire Imperial Navy, so it took a lot to surprise him or make him fearful. The Primarch's bestial wrath was one of these things.

"Y-yes lord?" he stuttered.

"All ahead full, target the ships of that fleet and set course for the Hell Hound, WE ARE RAMMING THAT SHIP!" After screaming at the naval officer, Qrow turned his attention to Dragoon. "Contact Driger and tell him to make the final launch procedures. Also prep' me a craft!" the Astartes officer didn't even get a chance to respond before his commander began to storm from the bridge, towards the elevator that connected directly to the ship's internal tram system. But before he could get there a cacophony of sirens and alarms blared throughout the ship. This spiked concern in the Primarch, but not enough to quell his rage.

"What now?!" he yelled, turning back to face the bridge.

"Lord!" Admiral Fyndral called from his position behind another deck officer, who was sat at a command console. "We have picked up a massive spike in warp activity!"

"From where?" Dragoon called from behind a augar panel on the starboard wall of the bridge.

"Are those cowards trying to jump away? Or have reinforcements arrived?" Qrow asked, now back at the railing.

"No lord, the readings aren't coming from the void..." he began, before his eyes widened in shock. "They're coming from within the planet."

Before anyone could react, a bright purple flash lit up the dark bridge. Everyone looked in the direction that it had come from and some of the human crew gasped, as the planet cracked in two along its equatorial line. In the centre, where the planet's burning core had once been, a warp rift sat. It pulsed and warped, growing larger as it launched bolts of purple warp lightning at the traitor ships closest to it, dragging them into it with unrelenting force. Before Qrow could give the order for a high-energy turn away from Raigon, the Excalibur was caught by one of these graviton bolts and swiftly pulled towards the rift. 

The pull jarred the ship and most of the humans and all of the servitors on the ship's main bridge were tossed through the air like a rich child's playthings. The Astartes of Dragoon's command crew staggered and lurched as the spacecraft moved beneath them (sometimes, artificial gravity was more of a hindrance than an advantage) and Dragoon himself had to cling onto the Master's Table to prevent himself from joining his men on the floor. Qrow was unaffected, he was one of the strongest Primarchs in a physical sense so he was able to brace himself against then ship's movements, he was looking for something. His highly enhanced eyes scanned every inch of space outside the ship, searching for his target, seeking his prey. Then he found it, just off the Excalibur's port side:

"There!" he called to the crew as they recovered and pointing. "Target and open fire upon the Hell Hound!" Within a second or two of this order being given, the Excalibur's port side was lit up as its entire broadside opened up and decimated the battle barge with an ocean of macro shells, plasma blasts and lance strikes. In seconds the entire starboard side of the Hell Hound had been ripped open, the pitchfork shaped prow had been blown off and its bridge was gone. The Hell Hound was dead and was left to drift into the rift in ruins. But the fight was not over.

"Enemy ships opening fire upon us!" an officer called.

"Void Shields are down! Warp interference preventing us from activating them!" another shouted.

"RETURN FIRE!!" Dragoon roared, his leadership instinct kicking in.

"We're approaching the rift!" Admiral Fyndral yelled, taking a firm hold of the Master's Table. "Five Seconds, all hands brace for impact!" he ordered over the ship's internal vox.

"Close blast shields!" Qrow gave the final order, as the Excalibur hit the warp rift, slowly sinking into it and creating a temporal ripple so large it destroyed several of the smaller ships around it.



         

Meanwhile, it was another peaceful night in Equestria, with most ponies either asleep or in nightclubs, so there were very few watching the skies that night. There was one however, a deep blue alicorn mare with a mane the same navy blue as the night sky with little white dots in it representing stars. She had a patch of black on each of her flanks and a crescent moon within each. Even without her royal crest and horse shoes, Princess Luna was the peak of beauty and royalty.

She'd taken the night off from wandering the dream-scape to simply admire her art - the stars. She recognized every little ball of light up there, well almost all.

"Hmm?" the Princess of the Night hummed to herself, as she saw one particular light that was far larger than the others and, apparently, moving towards the ground. It was too large to be a shooting star and it was clearly not a pegasus or thestral guard with a lantern.

Curious, Luna trotted over to the telescope that stood, dutifully, on her balcony and looked though it, directing it towards the light. What she saw made her gasp and knock the looking device over.

"SISTER!" she screamed, sprinting full-tilt into the castle.



                             

ENTRY ENDS
> Entry II: Impact
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

ENTRY BEGINS. 2nd YEAR OF THE GRAND AGE OF EQUESTRIA




Furious Storm-Qrow awoke to the sound of blaring sirens and rumbling. He could feel the floor beneath him shaking, as he tried to push himself off it, groaning as he slowly rose.

"Admiral Fyndral report." he ordered, trying to shake the blurriness from his vision. He received no response from the naval officer and this concerned him, the man was normally permanently aware of everything that went on around him and an order from his Primarch was something only a fool would ignore. Attempting to rise to his full height, he looked around the bridge and saw:

Equines. Some in officer's uniforms, some clad in ceremite plate and some melded into robotic frames. Qrow could only blink. He'd seen many strange things in his life: an Ork wielding a gretchen with a spike through its face as a weapon, an Ork Deff Dread bouncing around on a giant spring, an Ork tankbusta' using a gun that fired rocket-propelled bomb squigs. Come to think of it, most of the weird things he'd ever seen had been 'invented' by the Green-Skins. But this was on a new level, multi-coloured Equines in Imperial uniforms lying-unconscious-on the tiered floors of the Excalibur's bridge. He went to give himself a thorough look-over, but only got to seeing that he had hooves, a pair of feathered wings and a horn, before his attention was drawn back to the crisis at hand - er hoof.

He moved to one of the command consoles, moving the knocked out officer from his seat, and sitting down there. His hearts dropped into his stomach when he read off the holo-screen that the Excalibur was caught in a planet's gravity well and was being pulled in fast. Qrow began desperately applying commands to the ship through the console he was sat at, but was distracted from this when he heard a pair of groans, one from near the Master's Table and the other from behind a row of consoles on the opposite side of the bridge from Qrow. He recognised the two rising men by their attire - Captain Dragoon and Admiral Fyndral. 

The latter had a beige coat and a greying black mane & tail, that were both short and spikey. His eyes hadn't really changed, a stark white with small pupils, that always had a look that pierced into one's very soul. A short horn was protruding from his head, conical and spiralling out from his mane.

It would have been hard to tell Dragoon's mane and coat colours, since he was almost completely covered in armour, however it was this 'almost' that revealed the truth. A pair of silver-grey wings emerged from his sides, just beneath his backpack and a blood-red, short, scruffy tail was attached to his rear.

"Dragoon! Fyndral!" Qrow exclaimed, relieved to see that they didn't appear to be injured in any way. "Move with haste, I need your aid!"

"Lord?" the Admiral asked in a daze. "What happened to the ship?!" he shouted, seeming to get his priorities mixed up a bit.

"We're entering atmospheric conditions." Dragoon stated bluntly, manoeuvring himself behind another console and began checking the state the ship was in, seemingly ignoring his new form and putting protocol first. "We'll need to engage impact and void shields if we're going to survive re-entry."

"Fyndral re-route all directional controls to this console and all propulsion to Dragoon's. Captain you'll be commanding our thrust on the way in." the Primarch ordered his subordinates. "I'll also need you to active void and impact shielding, Fyndral."

"All ready done lord."

"Good, now open the bridge blast-shields. And keep me informed of any situation that arises." With that Qrow took a firm hold on a control column, that was normally used for manual docking, but had been reconfigured for these circumstances. "Full thrust Dragoon, let's get free of this dive."

The Excalibur rocketed forwards and began to angle its prow up, in relation to the planet below. The ship began to judder and rock even more as it entered the atmosphere, its hull glowing bright orange as it met air resistance. A few seconds of intense shaking later and the star ship had successfully entered the planet's atmosphere, an action that was quickly followed by an earth-shaking sonic boom. The thirty-six mile long ship was now being acted upon by the planet's ten g's of gravity and it was easy to see as structural stress caused the entire ship to groan and moan as forces it was never meant to experience pushed upon it from all directions. But the Excalibur was strong and held together despite never being designed for sub-void conditions, but now it was moving stupidly fast and the ground was approaching quickly.

"Drop thrust to twenty percent!" Dragoon complied, pulling the thrust lever back to almost idle. "Find me somewhere to land, Fyndral."

"We're currently above an expanse of ocean lord, but we're hastily approaching land. I'd advise touching down before then." the fleet admiral called back to the Primarch. Nodding his acknowledgement, Qrow turned to Dragoon.

"Activate all retro-boosters along the top of the ship, push us down lower."

"Aye lord." the small, blue retros that lined the ship's spine burst into life and began to force the vessel down through the air. Breaking through the clouds, the ocean that Fyndral had spoken of came into view, a vast expanse of black under the night sky, like those which had once covered Terra. But Qrow knew better than to think they'd be safe just because he couldn't see the land from where he was.

"Give me a view from the prow of the ship!" he yelled, this ship was thirty-six miles long after all. Before long one of the window panels of the bridge's main view port became a holo-display and revealing that from the front of the ship, the shore was a very short distance away.

"Divert all impact shielding to the bottom of the hull and prow!" Qrow yelled upon seeing what the display had to show. He pulled back on the control column, raising the ship's nose even further, but it was too late. The Excalibur's prow slammed into a headland, the shields preventing the ship's prow from being damaged, however they didn't stop the massive jolt from shaking the entire ship. Throughout the craft ammunition, weaponry, supplies and ponies were sent flying into walls and doors or simply tossed out of breaches in the ship's gunmetal-grey hull.

The Excalibur was now digging a trench through the land, its impact shields working so hard they were burning, white hot. Now there was nothing any of the three stallions on the bridge could do. The ship was digging so deep into the earth it was impossible to pull it free again and while Qrow wanted to stop the ship as soon as possible, he knew he had to get the entirety of the ship on land, or risk any of the breaches in the hull letting in sea water. So he did all he could do, hold on and let things play out as they willed.

It took about three minutes for the ship's mighty engines to begin passing over land and by this point the prow had begun to veer off to the right. The Excalibur was now swerving across the land, digging an even wider trench through the ground.

"Lord!" Fyndral called from the other side of the bridge, clinging onto his chair and console for dear life. "We're approaching a pair of mountains, the gap between them is just shorter than the length of this vessel!"

"Perfect." Qrow said to himself, before yelling: "Dragoon, kill the engines!" the astartes complied, bringing the thrust lever back to idle. The Primarch then turned the wheel on the column about ten degrees clockwise, the directional boosters on the upper half of the ship's port-side ignited and tilted the vessel in the same way as the steering device in its bridge. This increased the forces working to stop the ship, slowing her quicker. Upon reaching the inclined areas at the base of the mountains on either side, the Excalibur had lost most of her momentum, finally skidding to a stop in between the two mountains - huge chunks of earth and stone continuing to roll and bounce down the new slope formed against the ship's port side.

Fyndral let out a relieved sigh, finally relaxing as the forces being exerted on his body subsided. Qrow didn't hesitate from doing his duty - standing up and beginning to bark orders at the bridge crew as they slowly came to. He turned to Dragoon as the captain slowly approached him on all fours.

"Contact all of our leading officers and tell them to meet in the main strategium. We need to discuss this predicament in detail." Dragoon nodded his confirmation, turning to leave the bridge, before the Primarch stopped him. " And tell Kyron to start investigating the issue of our transformation into equines."

"I'm sure, if he's awake, that our chief apothecary is already on it." even though he couldn't see it, but Qrow could feel his friend's smile from beneath his helm. With that Dragoon turned, once again, and made his leave. Once the captain had left the bridge, Qrow trotted, heavily, towards the left side of the bridge's main view port, over looking a massive expanse of grassy plains with a few mountains in the far distance. 

For a second he felt a bit uneasy, as if someone - or something - was watching him from those distant peaks. He removed his matt-green helm, it was decorated with a golden pair of eagles wings forming the mouth plate and had a golden crest of an ornate broad-sword protruding from the forehead. Qrow stared into the shadowy-red eye lenses of his new helm, it had changed with him when they'd entered this realm and now looked distinctly equine, but he still recognised it as his helmet, crafted for him by his brother - Ferrus Manus - almost a century before.

"Father, were you aware this would transpire? Was that why you sent so many colony ships with our fleet? Or is this just as far beyond you as it is me?" all questions he knew he would, probably, never hear answered.



           
(3 Ship-Board Hours Later)

The group of leading officers had assembled in the Excalibur's main strategium, just as Qrow had ordered, and were all standing around the large, round hololithic-display table that was located in the centre of the massive, mostly windowed chamber.

The Strategium of the Excalibur was located in the vessel's sleeker middle section, along its central spine. It protruded as a large, rectangular tower, from the mass of spires and cannons that was the ship's back. On either side of it were a pair of twin-linked volcano lance cannons, aiming dutifully forward - towards the enemies of the Imperium. One of these cannons was currently being removed and replaced, as it had bypassed the maximum number of times it could be fired, 1,500 shots. Qrow stood watching the process of the fusion core being removed from the armoured rear of the cannon. The sound of metallic hoof-steps distracted him from his observation and he turned to look upon the approacher.

"All leading officers aboard the Excalibur have arrived lord Qrow." Dranzer's mechanical voice rasped, from the mouth plate that was permanently grafted to his face. "All are accounted for." he always gave the impression that he was talking into a vox transmitter. He had shadowy-grey fur and a thin layer of golden-yellow mane atop his head. An incredibly short tuft of tail protruded from the backside of his green, Cataphractii Pattern Tactical Dreadnought Armour and his golden left greave shone in the light of the room.  

"Thank you Dranzer." Qrow nodded in thanks to the first captain, and began to make his way towards the table. Gathered there were: all four of The Beasts Of The Storm, Fleet Admiral Fyndral, Commissar General Arcstos Node - leader of the Imperial Army Forces, Fabricator General of the Scarred Swords Xaylicth Talboran, Weapons Master of the Excalibur Rogmorun Bask and the Excalibur's chief Navigator Null. Qrow looked to all of their faces, from the identical colour schemed heads of the twin beasts, to the hooded mesh of metal plates and pipes that was the face of Talboran, all of whom possessed large, feathered wings. The royal purple coat and black mane of Draciel to the pale turquoise fur and wire mane of Rogmorun, both of these soldiers possessed a horn atop their heads, like Fyndral

"Well." he began, "Let us have council." They spoke of everything, the condition of the ship, their galactic location, the lack of communation with the main fleet, the defences they'd set up in the land around the ship and of course the casualties suffered during the battle with the enemy. The second of these topics was completely unknown, with the planet they were on was like no other in the whole of Imperium space.

"That brings us to our next point of discussion lord!" Node shouted, in his blaring, over-zealous voice. Qrow groaned internally, the general had always possessed the extraordinary ability to annoy the Primarch, every time he opened his artificial jaw. He had a darkened-red coat and mud brown mane and tail, finely cut in the ways of the Imperial Army and like Dranzer, he had no wings or horn. In Qrow's eyes, he didn't posses many redeeming qualities: Every word he spoke was at highly increased volumes, he was incapable of keeping his opinions to himself and every opinion he gave involved throwing a battalion of soldiers and armoured support at something. Also it was rather annoying that they'd already gone over this point several times before during other topics of their discussion and it had even been discussed thoroughly, but since they lacked any definitive response when it came to handling the enemy, Node was constantly bringing the topic up and it was really driving the Primarch the wrong way.

"We've already been through this Node." Qrow repeated, for the twelfth time. "We lack the Intel on the enemy to strike against them, we don't know their location, we don't know their strength, hell, we don't even know if any of their forces survived translation. So, for the last time, drop it!" he put force into his last statement, attempting to make it clear that he didn't wish to discuss it further.

"But lord if we can use the fleet's scanner's we can find them!" Everyone reacted differently to this: Draciel face-hoofed, Dragoon rubbed his temples and sighed, Dranzer growled and Driger sniggered. Qrow felt like giving up completely, like leaving the ship and walking off towards those mountains, never to return. No one could tell if Node was ignorant or just plain dense.

"Admiral, explain to the General-"

"Commissar General, lord!" Node interrupted, apparently forgetting the existence of ranks above his own and formality. This left Qrow slightly bewildered and Dranzer's temper began to rise.

"Explain to the Commissar General, why we cannot do as he suggested." Qrow growled impatiently, although he tried to hide it.

"The long range vox arrays are damaged. We can not contact the rest of the fleet at this time." Fyndral told the leader of the Army, doing his best not to insult the man in the process.

"Then we cou-!" Node began before Dranzer cut him off.

"OH SHUT-UP, YOU INSUFFERABLE LITTLE WORM!" 

"Zerith!" Draciel started, but he too was cut off - by a knock upon the door.

"Enter." Qrow called quickly, not wanting his highest ranking officers attacking each other.

A ship serf stumbled into the room, stopping next to the Primarch of the Scarred Swords and saluting.

"Lord Qrow, an army approaches." he panted, probably having run most of the distance between the closest observation tower to the strategium, which wasn't quite long enough to allocate the use of the ship's internal transport system, but still quite a long way.

"The Apocalyptians?" Dragoon asked urgently, taking a step towards the stallion and holding out an armoured hoof for the data slate he had.

"No captain, they appear to be native." said the serf breathlessly, giving Dragoon the hoof-held device. The captain of the sixth's emerald green eyes scanned the report, seeing key terms like: Pre-industrial era, monarchy, basic weaponry and medieval. He then gave the slate to his leader, for him to read over.

"I will deploy the Imperial Army immediately lord!" Node cried, standing up.

"NO!" Qrow roared, startling all of the non-astartes in the room. "I will take Dragoon and Driger with their companies. No other military force is to do any thing, I am I understood?!" aiming a glare at Node. All the men in the room saluted his orders and Qrow, the two aforementioned captains and several of the others left the room, leaving only Draciel and Dranzer left with the serf.

Draciel requested the data slate and then dismissed the stallion, as Dranzer made his way to one side of the room and watched the same volcano cannon that Qrow had been observing a view hours before, now illuminated by the morning sun, its golden panels shimmered and glinted in the light.

"Trust our Primarch's decision brother, if he needed your aid he would have asked for it." the captian of the eighth said reassuringly, flipping through the pages of information absent-mindedly.

"I am in perfect agreement with our leader's decision, that isn't what's bothering me." Dranzer growled his response, like a caged animal, ready to strike.

"Then speak your mind brother." 

"It's nothing lad, nothing at all." the first captain sighed, making to leave the chamber.

"I will be here if your opinion on the topic changes." the younger astartes replied, shrugging his shoulders.

"Your maturity both astounds and seriously aggravates me, boy." Dranzer growled as he left, causing Draciel to smirk as he kept on reading - either heedless or careless of his veteran brother's genuine ire.



    

Princesses Celestia, Luna, Cadence and Twilight Sparkle stood at the forefront of an army of about six thousand ponies, most of whom were clad in gold armour plating, but there were a few who wore a dark purple and some others who were wearing the magnificent armour of the Crystal Empire. Celestia and Twilight were in the same colour as most of the force - shining gold, while Luna wore the same royal violet as her thestral warriors and Cadence shone like the small detachment of Crystal Ponies in her glimmering plate of quartz.

To say they'd been shocked to see the immense, looming hulk of the Excalibur was an understatement worthy of only that mighty vessel. Everypony who saw it would instantly go pale and begin to feel weak at the knees as its shadow dwarfed them. The young, purple and green dragon known as Spike, gulped and began to shake in his armour.

"W-w-w-what is that thing? Some s-s-sorta giant flying castle?" he asked the princess who's back he was riding upon.

"We don't know Spike." Celestia answered for Twilight, when the younger Alicorn failed to find her voice. "But we WILL find out."   



 

[ENTRY ENDS]
> Entry III: Diplomacy
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

ENTRY BEGINS. 2nd YEAR OF THE GRAND AGE OF EQUESTRIA




Even in the distant and violent future of humanity it was still possible for one to find oneself in rather awkward situations, even aboard the ever-active warship - The Excalibur.

Furious Storm-Qrow, the mighty Primarch of the Scarred Swords space marine legion, was currently in one of these situations. He had just exited the starship's main strategium on a rather sour note, where a pair of his commanding officers had been at each other's throats. So he had been thankful when a ship serf had arrived to inform them of an approaching native attack force, purely because it would allow him to escape the madness that was trying to tell Commissar General Node that he could not attack something.

He was currently sitting in an elevator, moving swiftly down the ship towards the massive 'Astartes Launch Bay', in a rather tense and uncomfortable silence. With him in the tight, metal box were: Captain of the sixth company - Ozonus Prowl, aka Dragoon. Captain of the tenth and twin brother of Dragoon - Stratos Prowl, Driger. And the Fabricator General Talboran. The three pegasi sat around the elevator on the raised slabs that had once been the seats of the transport.

But despite the circumstances of their exit, Qrow had not expected the trip to be this quiet. Normally Driger would have made some sort of amusing jab about either Dranzer or Node... he pondered to himself, casting a glance towards the unusually stoic Captain. But then-again he has been like this since the Purge Campaign began...

Qrow was suddenly distracted from his thoughts when he felt the elevator come to an abrupt halt and with their minds so distracted, both he and his officers were almost pushed to the floor by the sudden force that acted upon them. The Primarch recovered quickly and glanced to the information panel in the top right corner of the box.

"Someone's attempting to board the transport with a class 'S' priority tag..." Talboran read from the same panel, his voice even more mechanical-sounding than Dranzer's. But this was not surprising, as the Mechanicum representative's hood covered a face comprised completely of metal plates, wires and pipes with a pair of bright green eye lenses being the only thing to illuminate this mesh of living technology. His real mouth and throat had long since replaced with a vox speaker connected directly to his brain through his spinal cord.

The four stallions were at a loss as to who could have a priority tag that ranked higher than their's at that time, but all became clear when the heavy double doors slid apart revealing the one who called for the Primarch's attention. There were three, actually.

The first was an Astartes, clad in the dull white of the Apothecarius with the symbol of the Prime Helix sprawled across his right shoulder guard. He was fully prepared for battle, with his multi-function medical gauntlet attached to his right foreleg and his battle pack fixed to his back, its spotlight turned off but its scanning node was active. He also wore a chain-sword and bolt pistol at his hips and his helm was locked to his head, with a conical horn protruding from the forehead, the colour of autumn leaves. Qrow also spotted a short, black tail sticking out of his armoured behind. This was the chief apothecary in the Scarred Swords legion and one of the most experienced medical officers in the Imperium, having served for as long as Qrow had lead the legion. This was Marcus Kyron.

The second figure was a slender female, clad in a splendorous armour of golden plates with a magnificent black, leather cape draped over her back. Both the cape and her armour were heavily adorned with platinum chains, rubies and other various jewelries, along with a large gold-studded Aquila sewn to the cape's back. At her belt she had a battle scarred kraken bolter and an ancient broadsword that had been wielded by everyone of her predecessors, its blade chipped and stained by age and the never ending thrill of combat. She wore no helm, instead she sported a golden face guard fixed to the neck of her black, slim-fit under armour. Without the presence of full headgear, her facial features could be easily seen but that made it no easier to read her expression, her mismatched blue and yellow eyes locked on the Primarch in a blank stare. A long bright red ponytail sprouted from the top of her alabaster white head and a twin protruded from her rear, so long it almost trailed along the floor. This woman was the Sister-Commander of the Sisters Of Silence contingent of witch-hunters that had accompanied the Swords on their Campaign of Purging, Kerrigan Rodrias.

The final pony walked close to the Sister-Commander, adorning the same mane and tail style and colour as her senior. She wore a simple black robe without any extra adornment aside from a silver Aquila on her left shoulder. She had a pale blue coat and dull grey eyes, turned down in respect for the VERY high ranking officers in the elevator. She must be the Sister-Commander's interpreter Qrow mused as the three entered and the iron doors slide shut again. It was not uncommon for high ranking Sisters of Silence to have an Aspirant Sister speak on her behalf, as the fully inducted sisters of the organisation were all bound under an Oath of Silence but the initiates had no such burden as of yet. This method made it far easier for the sisters to communicate with others outside of their order as well as offering the young initiates a chance to prove themselves ready to ascend to higher ranks.

"This is a rather inappropriate time for a report Kyron, we are currently on full alert." Qrow's deep voice rumbled through the confined space like a thunderclap, rolling around the walls for a few seconds after he spoke.

"I am aware of the inconvenience of my timing lord and I do apologise for that." Kyron's voice was quiet, even when it was being projected from his helmet speakers. This gave him a rather ghostly presence, for even as you listened to him speak one was also keenly aware of the crushing silence needed to actually hear him. He bowed his head as he apologised to his leader before continuing. "But I feel it is a matter of absolute significance regarding our new forms." to this Qrow sighed before grumbling his acknowledgement.

He then turned his attention to the lead sister and offered her a respectful nod. "Sister Kerrigan."

"Lady Rodrias offers her most respectful greetings and- a-an apology to you Master Storm-Qrow." the young interpreter bowed low as she spoke, avoiding all eye-contact with the Lord of Blades. She was clearly nervous, at least nervous enough to try and hide the fact her knees were shaking and her voice was cracking.

"What is your name young maiden?" he asked with a small smile, although it was impossible to see with his helm covering his entire head. He did not recognise this one, but maybe that was simply because of her new equine features. He had to admit, he probably would not have recognised any of his own council if they had not been wearing their own signature attires. Still, he remembered reading in the Sisters of Silence's most recent battle report that the Sister-Commander's last interpreter died in battle on Calipsian II, meaning this mare was in-fact new and thus didn't know him very well.

"Sister-In-Waiting Freida Tolm, my lord." she spoke quickly, lowering herself even closer to the ground as she did so.

She was shaking like an Ork war machine now, sweat beginning to form on her brow and tears threatening to spill forth from her eyes. Do I really create such an air of terror? he mused internally whist letting out a quiet sigh externally. Qrow reached out for her and she tensed, almost pulling away from the approaching hoof clad in green ceremite. She froze completely when that hoof was brought to her chin and then used to gently bring her head up to look at the helmet clad head of the Primarch. She stared into the fierce, crimson eye-lenses of the stoic stallion's helm and through them saw only a form of stern kindness.

"Well then Lady Tolm, one thing you must know about me is that I am no being you should fear. I live to protect the Emperor and his Imperium as you do. So you and I have no reason to come at odds. I do not ask you to fear me, I will not even ask you to bow in my presence, I only ask for you to serve the Imperium with every fibre of your being and every last ounce of your willpower. As long as you can do that you may look me in the eye without fear." the young mare stared at the Blade Lord for many moments, stunned by the way he had addressed her - almost as an equal. "And please, Lord Qrow is sufficient."

After a brief period she swallowed to remove the dry feeling in her throat and nodded.

"Yes lord, I will make the Emperor proud of my service!"

"Very good." Qrow smile broadened beneath his helm, it was always good to see such determination in the eyes of youth. "Take a seat you three and tell me of what you have learned. Quickly."





Kyron then proceeded to briefly explain his base finding about their new forms to the Primarch. Qrow logged every detail, every fine-point and every strength and accompanying weakness - Those with wings are capable of flight, those with horns are now psykers if they weren't before and those with neither of those have more enhanced physical strength and endurance... was his brief internal overview, although the first conclusion was a rather obvious one to draw up.

Dragoon interrupted the Apothecary once or twice to pose a question and Kyron even turned to Talboran at one point to discuss the matter of constructing a piece of equipment that could transform between hoof armour and some sort of grasping claw for operating weapons. 

The two later went into a deeper discussion about it while Qrow, Dragoon and the Sisters consulted about the sisterhood's new role on a ship that had about a third of its crew turned into psykers - the sisterhood's sworn enemy and prey. Driger merely sat in silent thought, completely removed from the rest of the elevator.

Before long the droning voice of the servitor that operated and controlled the express elevator echoed over a vox speaker in the corner of the box.

"Astartes Launch deck, base level reached. Passengers prepare to disembark." Qrow cast the cyborg a look before he left the elevator. As with all servitors it was more machine than organism, with only half its face and a small section of its upper torso still covered in its original skin and new dull blue fur. Its single organic eye stared ahead blankly, unblinkingly reflecting its inner mindlessness.

Or was it mindless? This question remained a constant mental itch at the back of his thoughts; 'how had the servitors been effected by this change of form and realm?' Qrow sighed, recognising that he lacked the time to ponder the notion, and took his leave of the elevator...

And stepped out into that immense grandeur of the Astartes Launch deck. It was a huge, open space that ran the entire length of the Excalibur's middle section and acted as his legion's base of operations and home. The walls were lined from top to bottom with squad arming bays, armoured support fitters and aircraft hangers - as well as six Titan armouries and the ship's entire complement of drop pod launch tubes. Most of the expanse was painted a simple black but there was enough gold piping, statues and gargoyles to give the place sufficient splendour.

Qrow watched on with silent pride as his sons bustled around, the small portion of those from the sixth and tenth preparing themselves for deployment while their non active brothers and those of other companies attended to their menial tasks; cleaning weapons, inscribing symbols of purity and honour onto bolt rounds, sparring, studying battle plans, etc.

"I could not have asked for a better legion." he mused to himself as he watched them work. He took notice as the sixth and tenth company elements activated for this deployment were now assembling in the blooded snow battle formation, where the astartes from both companies were interwoven with each other with the shining red of the sixth's right gauntlets mixed with the tenth's white helms to create the affect of a frozen winter's war. The two company captains who would accompany Qrow stood in front of their gathering troops marshalling the formation as it took shape. The other four ponies who had been present in the elevator ride down joined the primarch, standing at his sides with Talboran and Kyron at his right and the Sisters of Silence at his left.

Rodrias leaned over to her attendant and gestured something to her. Tolm nodded quickly to her commander before turning to the Blade Lord.

"Lady Rodrias thinks you have marshalled a fine legion here Lord Qrow, she admits she is impressed. It must take a strong man to lead such warriors." she complemented with a small bow, while Kerrigan herself offered Qrow a crooked smile and a nod.

"It takes more than strength to lead my astartes." Qrow shrugged whilst accepting a combi-bolter from the tech-priest offering it to him, awkwardly clipping it to his belt. Fat lot of good this thing's going to do me. he thought to himself before returning to his conversation with the Sister-Commander. "Simply being the warrior to kill the most foes may work for the likes of the Wolves or the World Eaters, but to lead my Swordsmen you must..." he paused mid thought, his mind drifting back to his earliest days as the leader of the second legion and his even earlier days as Hunter King of the Jaeger Praetora and as leader of the Knight's Nobilis World Fleet - all of the harsh trails and battles he'd lived through, the creatures he'd slain, the feats of courage and honour he'd accomplished. All to...

"Lord?" Talboran droned, the concern he felt not hearable in his monotone, mechanical voice. It was enough to snap the primarch from his thoughts though.

"You must be a leader who is worthy of a following, you must earn your right to command the Scarred Swords. If they see you as someone who deserves respect, no, who has earned the right to be respected through years of harsh battle and acts of greatness, then they will follow you eternally without question. I fought my battles, I won my wars, I earned my place as leader of this legion and they know it." he grinned as he finished speaking, watching on as the assembled companies finally stood together and performed a unified salute, slamming their right hooves to their armoured chests.

"KILL FOR THE LIVING, KILL FOR THE DEAD, KILL FOR THE GOLDEN THRONE AND THE EMPEROR WHO SITS ATOP IT!!" they yelled as one, slamming their hind hooves together, causing the entire one hundred and fifty layers of deck to shake.

"It would seem they are ready to set out lord." Kyron whispered, a slight warmth of pride in his voice and he seemed to straighten up a little as he spoke.

"So it would seem." Qrow muttered as he scanned the formation, seeing Dragoon and Driger standing at the forefront of it, their command squads gathered next to them as an honour guard. "Well then...."

"ASTARTES! WE MARCH TO MEET A NATIVE ARMY FORCE. BE AWARE WE ARE GOING IN AS DIPLOMATS, BUT WE MAY NOT LEAVE AS SUCH, SO BE PREPARED FOR ANY EVENTUALLITY!" he turned to face the lower left wall, which was blank of any armoury stations as it was instead:

"OPEN THE PORT-SIDE LANDING BAY DOORS!" with a mighty metallic *CLUNK* the heavy adamantine locks of the doors released and under mighty mechanical cranks the three, 50 metre thick, solid metal doors began to slide up and into the armour above. There was silence on the deck, broken only be the cranking machinery and the hiss of depressurisation.





In the short time the equestrian royal army had been outside the massive metal structure, they had established a basic staging ground encircled within a wide defensive perimeter. The centrepiece of this operation was a large golden tent of a simple pyramidal shape, it had the equestrian flag flying proudly from its central support and was protected on all sides by only the finest soldiers from Princess Celestia's own personal guard. Within the tent stood ten ponies: The four princesses of Equestria; Celestia, Luna, Cadence and Twilight Sparkle. The other ex-wielders of the Elements of Harmony, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Fluttershy and Rarity. Finally the ranking Captain of the royal guard and husband to the Princess of Love, Shining Armor. 

Celestia and the Mane 6 were all clad in shining gold armour plating, however the latter only donned this attire for their own safety and to a certain degree to give them a look of formality, with none of them bearing weapons on their persons excepting the princess of the Sun herself and her massive halberd. Princess Cadence and her husband wore the glittering armour plate of the Crystal Empire and even the short swords they carried were comprised of expertly-cut quartz crystals. Princess Luna was unique in the room, with nopony else wearing the same royal purple plate of the Night Guard or the hoof mounted combat claws its members where so proficient with.

They ringed a large oak table, its surface taken up by several large photos of the immense, half cathedral-half fortress that they had come here to investigate. It certainly wasn't what Celestia was expecting to find when her sister ran into her room screaming about something falling from the sky towards Equestria. And there I was thinking that the worst case scenario was a meteorite impact... the solar diarch thought solemnly to herself as she returned her attention to the debate Armor and Luna were having about the metal menace's origin.

"I'm telling you!" the prince insisted, leaning on the table and gesturing a hoof to the collage of pictures depicting the mighty structure. "This fortress cannot be what you saw falling from the sky Princess! It's far too big and heavy, nopony could have gotten it up there to begin with." Shining Armor had been adamant on this matter from the moment he saw the mass of towering spires and great lengths of metal plating and he was having a hard time believing what he was seeing could even exist, let alone drop from the sky encased in fire. "It's just impossible!"

"Then where do you suggest it came from Captain?" the Princess of the night questioned coolly. Not once in this frustratingly repetitive debate had she raised her voice or broken her gaze on her nephew-in-law, instead she kept her head and suppressed her growing impatience. Shining showed no such decorum.

"It was probably under a cloaking spell this whole time! And whatever it was you saw falling hit it and broke the spell." his disbelief was making him slightly hysterical - it was all too much. He was starting to hyperventilate, his legs were shaking and tears were beginning to well up in the corners of his eyes. But who could blame him? They were standing only a hundred meters from a structure larger than any ever conceived in Equestria's history, that bristled with weapons of untold numbers and of completely alien designs. He had to rationalise it anyway he could, even if it only made him slightly less terrified of it.

"Shining..." Cadence put a gentle hoof on her husband's shoulder, causing him to snap his attention towards her. Unfazed by his jerky, almost violent movements, she wrapped her forelegs and wings around him in a loving embrace, rubbing his back in soothing circles. She waited until his breathing evened out and he slumped against her before continuing. "There isn't a cloaking spell in existence that could hide the shear amount of power that thing is giving off."

"We have checked." Twilight interjected quietly, before hushing herself again and returning to the selection of war strategy guides and manuals before her.

"This adversary is not of Equestria, love." the crystal adorned princess continued unfazed, looking her husband straight in the eye and fixing him with a solemn look. "We know nothing of it, where it came from or any way to combat it if that situation should arise."

"But...then..." the prince had calmed down now, but that only went to show just how hopeless he felt. He cast his own gaze to the ground, unable to look his wife in the eye. "If I don't know how to fight this menace...then how can I protect you from it?" as he asked he reached out with a hoof and placed it on Cadence's slightly enlarged midsection. "How am I supposed to protect you both?"

The Princess of Love opened her mouth to respond, but just as she was about to a celestial guard barged into the tent. He was breathing heavily and sweat glistened on his fur, his eyes were wide with a mixture of readiness and terror.

"Your majesties!" he panted, picking out Celestia specifically and bowing his head.

"What is it stallion?" the solar diarch asked urgently, beginning to walk around the table with a brisk pace. The guard flopped to his haunches for a moment, fighting to stay conscious and to keep his lunch down after galloping at top speed from the front. Why didn't they send a pegasus? Celestia wondered to herself as she approached the ailing stallion. "Report!"

"Your highness..." he began, his lungs struggling to bring in enough air to sustain him and allow him to speak as well. The two guards stationed at the tent entrance attempted to move in to support him, but he waved them away with a hoof. "The fortress...it's...it is opening..."

Thirty seconds later everypony was standing at the front of the Equestrian camp, watching a section of the metal fort slowly slide upwards into the battlements above it. They watched in awe as thousands of tonnes of solid metal progressed steadily upwards, eventually revealing a rather unique sight.

A tide of green, red and white. An organised mass of metal clad warriors, moving in seamless formation towards the Equestrian war camp. And one thing was very apparent to the assembling ponies - These beings were huge. Equine in form, but each one easily as tall as Princess Luna and many times over more bulky. 

On average, each soldier carried two weapons at his side. On his left was carried what appeared at first to be a thick, solid blade but as the force advanced the Equestrians could see that they were not inherently sharp and were instead made up of many individual teeth. Some of the warriors carried what resembled normal swords, but these toothed blades made up the majority of the force's compliment. Then at their right side, was a device that the smaller equines could make neither heads nor tails of. It was a large block of solid, black metal with a circular opening at one end and two protrusions sprouting from its underside. It was clearly a weapon, but its purpose and function was alien to the natives. Once again, there were other types of device among the ranks of these massive metal warriors, some even more exotic-looking than the black block. But like with the toothed sword, it was simply what was carried by a majority of them.

They advanced quickly and soon they were little over two hundred yards from the Equestrian force. It was at this point that the figure at the head of the formation gave a slight nod of its head and Celestia could swear that she heard it say something, but from this distance she could not be sure. At this gesture the main block of the formation halted its advance, every giant warrior coming to a complete stop in perfect unison, with only the command party continuing on. 

All eyes were on this troop now, focused exclusively on the leading commander. It truly was a sight to behold, being around about the height of a full grown minotaur (horns included) they stood decently half a foot taller than Celestia and, similar to its troop's comparison to Luna, many times more built out. It was clad in an armour of emerald green, adorned with trims and details of shining gold. On its back was draped a cloak of flowing crimson and at its side was a beauty of a broad-sword, with a blade of black and cross-guard of golden wings. Its mane and head were hidden behind a stoic, metal helm that was formed from several interlocked parts; a winged mouthpiece, a shining crest in the shape of a curved sword that hid its horn and a stunning, blood-red plume that swayed slightly in the breeze. It looked out upon the world from behind glaring, crimson eye pieces and heard through recurved ear dishes fitted to the rear of the helm.

It was flanked by six more of the invaders. Three were more of the massive, armoured warriors that made up their main force, two in the same matt-emerald plate as their leader, although one wore a blood-red right gauntlet while the other donned a snow-white helm. The third hulking knight was clad completely in alabaster-white plate aside from its right shoulder guard and left vambrace which shared its colours with his cohorts. 

The fourth figure was shrouded completely in a pale crimson cloak, with a half-bone-half-metal skull surrounded by a cog pendant hanging from the neck. It was a daunting figure, with the only signs of life in it being the pale-yellow wings protruding from the sides of the fabric and two glowing orbs peering out from under the hood. It made a strange whirring sound when it moved... This figure, along with the last two members of this command party were more-or-less normal pony sized, although this made the former no less creepy to the gathered ponies.

The latter were both earth-pony mares, one clad in an armour of gold with a slight reddish tint and the other in a simple, black leather robe. Both had their manes and tails styled in majestic crimson pony-tails and carried sliver rapiers at their sides. The armoured mare had her gaze fixed on the Equestrians in a blank glare, while the other trotted close to her side, eyes and head down in a respectful manner.

Celestia swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat and leaned down to whisper to her tense sister, niece and student.

"Walk with me." she breathed and they nodded, following the solar diarch as she set out across the grassy plain to meet this command group. The five remaining members of the Mane 6 watched their leaders go, anxious to go with them but rooted in place by fear and order.

The two groups met about a hundred yards from both the Equestrian and Invader lines, with the two leaders stopping about a foot from each other. For a time, there was silence. The tension in the air was so thick it seemed as if one could cut it. It was hard to tell who exactly would speak first, with Celestia herself being at a loss as to what to say. How does one pony go about greeting another who has just dropped from the sky in a fortress of steel? But as it would turn out, she wouldn't have to.

The towering pony before her began to move its left hoof upwards, slowly and carefully as to not cause too much alarm. This didn't stop Princess Luna taking a step forward and deploying one of her claws. Unfazed by this, however, the leading invader continued to move its left hoof up towards its helm, where it took an uneasy grasp of it and began to pull it upwards. Celestia gave her sister a look and nodded at her to stop to which she complied, albeit reluctantly. When the eldest princess looked back to the knight before her, it - no - He had completely removed his helm and was looking down on her with a relaxed, non-threatening look. 

His coat colour was a brilliant autumn-red, littered with flecks of gold and his head was outlined by a mane and short beard of stunning silver-white. His face also sported several savage scars, with one of the worst being a jagged crack of pale fur that ran from his left ear to his  jaw bone. And yet all of these features were completely ignored because the attention of the four princesses was elsewhere. They had focused in on his eyes. His sclera were a deep, night-sky-blue dotted with white, swirling around his shining golden irises. His pupils were a very dark blue, borderline black and moulded into the shapes of four-point stars.

It took the bass rumbling of the stallion's chuckle to snap the solar diarch back to attention. Furious Storm-Qrow spoke with a voice of rolling thunder, carrying all the way to the furthest reaches of both ranks of troops and causing the Equestrians to flinch.

"Well met your majesty. I bring you greetings from the Imperium of Mankind."






ENTRY ENDS
> Entry IV: The Arc Phantom
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

ENTRY BEGINS. Date Unknown





By the time recorded on the targeting auspex it had been four Terran Standard months since that fateful day. Four months of confusion, seventeen weeks of fear, one-hundred and twenty-two days of silently begging for the Emperor's forgiveness. The terrible day that Primarch Raigon Calypsus had fallen from the Emperor's holy light into the dark and foul grasp of the daemonic ones.

Private Gunner Kira Estell, a junior gun operator aboard the Apocaliptian Hunter-class Destoyer; Arc Phantom, sat hunched and shaking in a far corner of gun deck twelve. The human turned unicorn mare was terrified beyond all reason, her sand yellow coat and pale violet mane were sticky and matted with sweat, tears and blood causing her tattered Imperial Army uniform to stick to her lithe form. The young mare had developed a rudimentary control of her new psyker abilities and was using them to levitate the massive Crusade Pattern Astartes Boltgun before her, its sights aligned with the sealed blast door separating her from the rest of the ship. Even it was shaking. 

The chattering rattle of the thirteen .75 calibre rounds rattling around in the bolter's clip was one of only three sounds that punctuated the crushing silence that occupied the wide space that housed defence gun 12. The other two sounds were a pair of separate breathing rhythms, one frantic and ever constant, the other; rasping and irregular. The fresh gunner was trying her best to quieten her hyperventilation, but she failed miserably as the memories and the voices crashed around inside her mind like like a pack of terrible beasts - trying desperately to tear her resolve asunder. It was only because she was focusing solely on holding the titanic weapon that she'd kept her sanity this long.

"My aim shall not falter. My aim shall not falter. My aim shall not falter. My aim sha-" she was broken from her maddened murmurings by a wet, raspy chuckle from the glazed black hulk that was propped up next to her. The sound was harsh, forced out of a cracked ceremite helm by a struggling vox speaker - garbling it with static and mechanical warbling. The Apocalyptian astartes' voice was harsher still, a gruff bark of an accent mixed with bloody coughs as his shredded lungs struggled to keep him alive.

"You know, I can't quite tell if you've completely lost your sanity or if you're still desperately clinging onto the pitifully few remaining shreds of it." Fire Captain Anthius Karl, an immense auburn-furred unicorn stallion, said with the broken rasp of a nail gargler. His words were followed by a succession of grisly coughs as his lungs emptied their gory contents into his helmet rebreather. Kira shuffled closer to him as he hacked and spluttered into his helm, placing her hoof gently against his shoulder plate in a purely ceremonial attempt to support him - she new she could never hope to hold even a fraction of his and his armour's weight.

"Please lord. You must endeavour to conserve your strength." she whispered, looking into the glaring red eye lenses of her saviour's skull mask. He gently pushed her hoof away and lightly laughed again, the exhaustion he clearly felt echoing hollowly within the sound.

"You say that as if you believe I will survive this. I first betrayed the Lord Emperor and now I have betrayed my own primarch as well, in two completely separate acts. I do not deserve to live through this ordeal. Those things I used to call brothers will break through those doors eventually and even if they don't kill us, The Swords surely will. They are a vengeful bunch and we were damn foolish enough to incite their wrath." his words were then quickly followed by a fresh bout of bloody retching which finished with a irritated grunt of pain. "And even before attempting to survive all that... I have to get past this..."

The gunner sighed as she followed his turned gaze to his flanks or, at least, what was left of them. His right leg, flank and lower abdomen had been reduced to an ugly patch of grisly scar tissue - the entire section of his body having been removed by a frag grenade, tossed into the room moments before he'd been able to seal the blast door. She'd tended to it as best she could and his astartes physiology meant that the wound had been quickly closed by scar tissue mere minutes after it had been blown open, but he was still clearly suffering from it. She had to try and divert the topic of conversation, to get his mind focused on anything except the pain.

"When you spoke of The Scarred Swords just now." she began, bringing the warrior's attention back to her. "You had a tone of... familiarity. You have met a Swordsman?" she was not only driven by a want to lessen Anthius' pain, at least superficially, she was also genuinely curious having never met a Scarred Swords space marine before. "What are they like? I have yet to meet one, although I still wish to."

The astartes before her cocked his armoured head slightly, as if confused by the question and following statement. "'Have yet'? You wish to gaze upon a hostile Swordsman with your own eyes? You are aware that would mean swift, no, immediate death?" that was no question, but a statement of simple truth. The Swords didn't understand mercy. The order of hunter-knights in which they were raised and trained didn't teach it nor require it. But in response Kira only smiled forlornly at her saviour and shrugged.

"It would be a finer way to die than at the hands of the beasts that now walk the halls of my home." as she spoke, Estell swore she saw the astartes flinch, ever so slightly, but it was so infinitesimal she couldn't be sure that he did. He was silent for a brief time, quietly mulling over her words in his head, before chuckling once again. He raised his head and took a gravelly breath to speak;

But found himself interrupted by the low whine of the ship's alert siren, it's dull blare then being promptly drowned out by a growing roar and the shaking of the Phantom's steel bones. Both occupants cast their gazes towards the nearest sighting port and caught sight of a disturbingly unfamiliar, and yet easily recognisable, orange glow.

"Looks like my story will have to wait lass." the Fire Captain growled, his tone turning sour as he watched the glow intensify and felt the ship rock only harder. "We are setting out to planetary war..."





Sixth Captain Dragoon sighed as he stepped out of the Equestrian war tent, after approximately two hours of cultural exchange and rule setting, mentally drained by the attritional process that was diplomacy. He made no attempt to hide his loathing for the act, openly admitting that it wasn't his favourite method of resolving conflict at almost every opportunity he could.

"Then why is it I always get picked to accompany Lord Qrow on these missions of peace?" he grumbled to himself, letting out an exasperated sigh as he sat back against one of the tent's external support beams. He sat there silently for a few seconds, his mind wandering aimlessly, until he finally grew sick of the taste of recycled air and reached up to the base of his helm. After a few brief moments of blind fumbling, he found the pressure lock release with his new hooves and pressed it, he then applied a quick twist which was followed by the sharp hiss of atmospheric escape. 

Succeeding in that rapid, yet fumbling, ritual he removed his helm and mag-hooked it to his belt. He took in a deep, drawn-out breath as the armour piece left his head, exposing his silver-grey fur to the gentle breeze. As the air passed by his teeth and brushed over his tounge, he could taste each and every individual element of the planet's atmosphere. 

"Nitrogen; approximately seventy-eight percent by volume. Oxygen; twenty-one percent by volume. Argon; nought-point-nine-eight percent. Carbon; nought-point-nought-four percent. Trace concentrations of neon, helium, methane, krypton and hydrogen." he listed aloud to himself as he exhaled, pondering the implications of such proportions. "Terran proportions. Perfect for human life, although, it's not Gaia." he concluded quietly. He took another, quicker breath before opening his eyes to look upon the world with them, for the first time. A world appeared different when viewed through the harsh red optical lenses of an astartes war-helm. So, to truly appreciate a planet's natural glory, one must look upon it without the clutter of vital readings and targeting displays.

Like his primarch, whose gene-seed had created him, Ozonus' eyes were far from normal in appearance or function. Formed from Tri-pointed pupils, shining-emerald irises and ash-grey sclera, like Qrow's they possessed a fantastical quality seen in very few places throughout humanity's territories. However, they weren't a purely an ornamental trait. Every Scarred Swords space marine could observe the world in additional wavelengths of the Electromagnetic Spectrum, including Infra Red, Ultra Violet and, in some rare cases, even X-rays, granting them a form of natural heat vision. Not only that, but they also perceived the world at a higher rate of 'frames per second' as the legion's apothecaries often put it to the initiates. His vision was also honed to a far finer point than that of most creatures, able enough to determine the width and length of an Ork's nose hairs from approximately two kilometres away with an almost negligible margin of error. Of course, several of these visual functions were granted to the other astartes legions via artificial optical implants and retinal replacements, but the Swords and their Primarch were the only known beings in the Imperium to possess such sight naturally.

But there was one particular feature of his ultra-enhanced optics that was especially useful at this point it time. Enhanced pupil dilation. While the scorching, early-morning sun above was blinding most of the Equestrians with its rays, his eyes had almost instantly adjusted to the light levels to allow him to see perfectly.

However, there was unfortunately nothing too spectacular to observe here. Just a grassy plain, occupied by milling soldiers and hulking warriors of green, red and white. A common sight for the high-ranking astartes. What was slightly less common, was an inviting aroma wafted into his nostrils by the wind and the rather curious argument that was carried with it.

"I'm tellin' ya, adding this to them would make them unbelievably delicious, it's proven!"

"And Ah'm tellin' ya'll, these soldiers don' need calories like that in their diets!"

With his curiosity now peaked at the thought of obtaining information on the Equestrian diet, Dragoon rose to his armoured hooves and wandered around the main tent and towards a secondary one that was adorned with a chimney.





"No, Pinkie Pie." Applejack repeated, sternly, for the eighth time.

"But whyyyyyyyyyy?" the party-planner whined in response, putting on her best foal pout in an attempt to sway the apple farmer's decision.

"Ah will not compromise the soldiers of Equestria at such a important time, by lettin' ya put caramel on the apples Ah'm gonna serve 'em."

"But caramel apples are good! It's a proven fact! Plus we do need sugars ya know."

"Sure, they're good. But they ain' exactly good for ya. These ponies need healthy food, not 'good' food."

"I feel complied to agree with the orange one under these circumstances." a third, incredibly deep voice interjected as the tent entrance was pushed aside. When both mares turned to behold this newcomer they found themselves staring at a towering, green-armoured hulk trudging into the cooking area. His unannounced entrance, and appearance in general, caused Applejack to almost jump clean out of her fur.

What the hay is one o' them doin' here?





The bridge of The Excalibur was quiet, as per usual, when First Captain Dranzer stepped onto it from the turbo-lift. The darkened, broad, tiered command deck was an exemplary space when it came to representing military discipline at its finest. Midshipmen and Lieutenants milled about amongst the consoles in practised silence, quietly reciting orders and requests between each other and their superiors. The more experienced Commanders sat at the control stations, actively rerouting power and resources around the ship, engaged in the on-going effort to restore the mighty vessel to acceptable working order. Four Captains watched over the bridge, each presiding over his or her own quarter of the management deck, comparable to sentinel statues at a city's gates - observing every ebb and flow of information that entered and left their borrowed domain.

Overseeing this entire, infallible, mechanism was Lord Admiral Achilles Fyndral. It was clear the man-turned-pony was back in his groove, which Dranzer had to admit was rather impressive - very few mortals would have been able to pull themselves together mentally after such a change, let alone completely overcome it in a matter of hours. He was orchestrating every last movement aboard the bridge with an efficiency only a true veteran could possess, barely raising his voice above a whisper and yet every soul on the deck heard him loud and clear, as if he were standing right next to them.

Zerith had initially been wary of the idea of a non-astartes officer having command over The Excalibur in the primarch's absence, but he had to admit; Fyndral was a damn good military director, a born leader.

"How go the repairs, Achilles?" the astartes droned in his mechanical voice, circling around the Master's Table, towards the bridge's rear, and drawing alongside the smaller stallion to join him in looking down upon the wide stage of an administrative play. Alone, a mortal man was frail, weak-minded and ultimately incompetent. But together, as a single part of a larger mechanism, they were strong, unyielding and capable of accomplishing anything. This was what the Scarred Swords were constantly striving to protect; the unity of mankind, the pillar on which the Imperium stood.

"Slow going I am afraid." the Admiral replied grimly, a sour sneer creasing the ghostly features of his equine face. "The Long Range Augar Arrays are still offline, although the exact reason why that is remains unknown... We have servitor teams looking into it. Vox communications throughout the ship are patchy at best and nonexistent at worst, we still have yet to receive anything from engineering at all. "

"What of the hull integrity?"

"Relatively minor damage so far, nothing that cannot be mended in a short time."

"Crew losses?" Dranzer didn't, as such, fear the answer to his question, for a single or even hundreds of lost human lives meant very little in the grand scheme of things. But he couldn't help but feel somewhat sorrowful, these had been living, breathing beings after all - beings he'd sworn to protect...

"The Excalibur lost a total two-hundred and forty-three crewmen and women in the, short, battle over Raigon and the following crash landing, however; that figure is likely to rise as we re-establish communications with the rest of the ship." Fyndral quickly summarised, not wishing to dwell on the subject for too long under current conditions. They would mourn later, for now they had to remain focused on restoring the ship.

"Very good." the astartes' reply was blunt and impassive, although it was near impossible to ever detect any hint of emotion in the words that came from the artificial vox larynx. The mortal stallion often theorised on how the first captain lost his original throat, but whenever he asked the soldier he was always given the response; "It was before your time admiral, do not trouble yourself over it." His own way of saying "Don't ask or I will break you like a twig."

It was rather frustrating to say the least, especially for a soul as naturally curious as Achilles Fyndral.

"Lord Admiral." he was broken from his thoughts by the call of one of the deck captains, calling from her position on the base tier - behind a central console. He knew what she was going to say before she spoke another word, he knew the exact nature of her station's role on the bridge, a hopeful anticipation filling his chest for the first time since long before this fateful crusade. But, he maintained proper military restraint and control, offering the officer the appropriate response to her request for his attention.

"Yes, what is it captain?" he asked, expertly hiding the emotional buzz he was feeling behind his face of office.

"We have mid-range augar, sir." came the stoic response from the grizzled veteran captain and for brief second Fyndral, genuinely, felt like smiling, before quickly noting that she'd taken another breath to continue. But, at first, she didn't. She just stood there, mouth slightly agape, her stoic features creased and lined with indecision.

"Finish your report, captain." he spoke his order slowly, being calculative in his words, almost fearing the answer he was about to receive. The captain swallowed, almost unwilling to comply.

"We're picking up a return signal, from within the planet's atmosphere, sir. It's an Apocalyptian escort ship, sir..." her eventual reply was slow and cautious and all activity on the bridge, apart from the mindless actions of the servitors, stopped to take it in.

"Current coordinates and heading?" Fyndral inquired, his tone even and unreadable, even to Dranzer (or some might argue, especially to Dranzer).

"Descending through the lower atmosphere on the opposite edge of the main continent, entering ground assault altitudes. But as of yet, only vertical movement - it's not advancing on us, sir." the captain concluded, her tone slightly dour despite the, overall, satisfying news. The lord admiral picked up on this and quickly honed in on it.

"You are not done, are you captain?" the honoured mare nodded and proceeded with the final piece of intelligence that the, freshly activated, augar had given them. 

"We have detected a dense population of bio-signatures beneath the craft, sir." she did not need to elaborate on that.

"A city." Dranzer finally rasped, the organic sections of his face and muzzle set in a fierce grimace. The bridge was dead silent now, even the servitors having halted in their labours at the behest of the senior deck crew. All equine faces were turned towards the first captain and the lord admiral - expecting, almost begging, for orders. In turn, Fyndral turned to Dranzer, eyeing the most senior officer currently on the entire ship with an impassive stare.

For a moment, First Captian Alatreon Zerith was gripped with indecision. Do I contact Lord Qrow and request orders? Or do I just act? This is not our world... if we just strike against the Apocalyptians now, even if we do so in the defence of the locals, we will most likely be branded as aggressors against these people, er, ponies. The backlash could... No. He took a rasping, filtered breath to clear his mind, resetting himself to war mode.

"We have no time to waste. Contact Commissar General Node, he is to mobilise three battalions of the Imperial Army to strike against this craft." a vox officer saluted and spun back to his console, equipping his headset as he began tuning the vox to the required channels. Dranzer continued as the entire room came to life, its occupants finally realising that they were back at war.

"There is no point in marshalling additional astartes forces for battle, when we already have elements of two companies just idling outside the ship... Can we contact Lord Qrow?"

"Negative lord, Lord Qrow is still under radio silence for the negotiations. We are getting no vox returns from him, Driger or Sister-Commander Rodrias." called another voxman from the same division as the one who was now clearly, indicated by the intense volumes of speech from the other end of the channel, in communications with Node. Dranzer picked up on a key missing name in the serf's report.

"THEN PATCH ME IN WITH DRAGOON!" he roared, swiftness of action now of the utmost importance...





For one say that Lord Of Blades; Furious Storm-Qrow seemed surprised as the fleet of Valkyrie gunships and Devourer dropships flew, at full combat speeds, over the top of the Equestrian camp, would have been a blasphemy of the highest order - to suggest aloud that a primarch had any flaws at all was to effectively take out a pistol and press it to one's own temple.

But, and although he would never admit it in present company, his eyebrows did raise considerably as the twenty-eight strong imperial navy transport group rumbled over head - heading due East with all the haste that their mighty promethium engines could muster. Out of the edges of his peripherals, he could see Equestrian soldiers quivering in their armour, or falling flat on their rumps, or - in Celestia's case - whipping around to demand answers from the towering stallion. I swear to His Majesty, I'm going to find Node an-

"My Lord!" however, both Celestia's words and Qrow's thoughts were cut off by an approaching, fully armoured, Captain Dragoon. He had two of the Equestrian heroes in tow, as he strode towards the command groups from the catering tent. Curiously, he seemed to be marked by blotches of pastry batter and other food mixtures, but stained war-plate was the last thing on anypony's mind at that exact point in time. When the sixth captain reached the group, it was Driger to first approach and greet him with the question that was occupying all minds at that time.

"The hell is going on brother?! Why and WHO deployed the Imperial Army?" Dragoon didn't stop in front of his twin and, instead, stood at attention before his commander - choosing to relay to him directly.

"Sire, Apocalyptian vessel detected in the planet's lower atmosphere." he reported directly, his plain statement causing almost every Imperial in earshot to flinch and inspiring everything from; hushed whispers of trepidation to outright screams of terror from the Equestrians. But he wasn't done. "It has anchored above a population centre, almost directly East of here. We're picking up Warp breaches."

"East of here..." Cadence pondered aloud, before almost instantly coming to the horrible realisation that had already struck her husband and both of her aunties. "Manehatten!"

"Yes..." Princess Celestia agreed grimly.

"How do we know this isn't your doing?!" Luna didn't miss a beat in making her accusation, quickly turning on the Swords and the Sisters of Silence. However, the Imperials seemed to ignore her completely and continued their deliberations.

"Is this intelligence reliable?" Qrow inquired, not wanting to make such an immense diplomatic faux pas based on augar noise or off the word of a certain bullheaded Imperial Army officer.

"Came in straight from Dranzer and Fyndral on the bridge. Astartes transports are being prepped for launch as we speak and I've already ordered sixth company's equipment to be loaded up, at least those of the group present here and now." Dragoon replied, now looking off towards The Excalibur as, even at this distance, the upper launch doors of the Astartes Launch Bay could be seen slowly sliding open.

"Just sixth company and only the ones here?" Driger exclaimed, storming up to his blood kin's side. "We should be deploying your entire damn house!"

"At this time, The Excalibur can only deploy four Thunderhawk gunships and two Thunderhawk transporters. Only enough for one-hundred astartes as well as armoured support." Dragoon sighed, obviously unhappy with the restriction but fully aware that he would have to make do. But only being able to deploy one hundred astartes from a company of five thousand was a very aggravating statistic. Driger snarled, replacing his helm to hide his bestial fury behind layers of adamantium and ceremite.

"What are you deploying with you?" the primarch cut in at this point, returning the sixth captain's attention to him. He had no time for Driger's, unusually, agitated attitude at the moment.

"Two Castraferrum Pattern Dreadnoughts, in the forward bays of two of the gunships - brothers Margam and Celius. Two Predator Destructors and a Hellblade."

"Are the crews capable of piloting their tanks?" Qrow was more than aware of the restrictions that their new forms could threaten to put on the forces of the Imperium and was in no mood to lose elite astartes and precious war machines to a lack of fingers. "Our Hellblades are a valuable commodity and do not exist in large numbers, as you know. Losing one as a result of unfamiliarity to our equine forms would be beyond tragic."

"The tank crews have assured me that they have spent every moment since our arrival training themselves to use their vehicles with their new forms." Dragoon replied, eyeing the first of the airborne Thunderhawks as it approached them. 

It's matte-green fuselage and wings had been heavily loaded up with additional, anti-armour rocket pods and although it would be somewhat slowed by the added weight, he knew that they would be more than necessary in a battle with an astartes destroyer. The nearby Equestrian soldiers scattered as the craft came in to land, impacting the ground with a dull thud and a hiss as the landing skids touched the soil.

"First, second and third squads load up and prepare for combat, we're off to slay monsters and traitors. Other squads, board the other 'Hawks, when they arrive, in accordance to squad number." Dragoon barked into the vox, glad to finally be back in an environment that he was familiar and comfortable with - battlefield command. "However, while their word is the only proof of ability that they've been able to give me, it is also all I need." he finished off his thought from earlier, his confident smile almost visible from beneath his helm.

"And it's more than enough for me as well." the primarch agreed, whilst watching a second gunship and the first of the transporters coming in, the former moving in to land while the latter took up a holding pattern - a massive, heavy-battle tank already slung below its body by powerful grav-hooks. He approached Dragoon and placed a hoof on his shoulder, in a fatherly fashion, smiling down on the veteran captain. "Fight well, my son, may The Emperor grant you a swift and decisive victory."

"And let us hope that we are not too late." he replied, briefly placing his own, smaller, hoof atop his leader's - before stepping back and beginning his move towards the waiting Thunderhawk. However, he was quickly halted by a sudden and somewhat violent cry of:

"WAIT!"

All heads, near and far, promptly turned towards the furious Princess of the Night, as she stood by her elder sister - catching her breath after utilising the Royal Canterlot Voice so quickly and at such elevated volumes. She, along with all of the Equestrian leadership, was completely in the dark as to what was happening at that exact moment. All she could completely pick up on was that Manehatten was in some serious trouble and that she couldn't help but feel that there were somethings that their 'guests' weren't revealing about the situation. She wasn't about to let them go flying about the Equestrian kingdom, doing whatever they pleased - at least not without her there to watch them.

"Do you honestly believe that I'm just going to let you fly off and wage war on our soil, just like that?!"

"Given the current situation, would that not be a prudent thing to do?" Dragoon asked as he turned back around to address the Princess of the Night, refusing to give up any ground as she rapidly approached him. His voice was cold and he was straight to the point with his argument, however, he spoke without any condescension or arrogance whatsoever. "With respect, you are completely incapable of effectively combating the threat your nation now faces. As the most advanced, numerous and experienced military party now in existence on your world, this threat should be left to us."

"You underestimate our might and overstretch your authority under these circumstances" Luna snarled, her own voice a direct contrast to the honoured captain's - hot and seething with emotion.

Qrow sighed. He'd seen this exact scene play out before, albeit in somewhat different situations, many times. It was like watching an exchange between Lorgar and Guilliman or between Leman Russ and Rogal Dorn - one side a fiery wave of intense, emotional opinion, the other an icy wall of infallible fact. Having been on all sides of these kinds of debates he knew how to resolve the dispute, but he was unsure of whether or not he should. 

The princess had played the card that he'd been dreading, the one that declared a single, simple truth. This was not their world. He knew that when in a position like the one he currently found himself in, the most fitting decision would be to ignore the Equestrian's grievances and order the sixth company to go to war with all haste - most of his brothers would have given the command without a second thought. Ultimately, they would be thankful after the fact, would they not?

"I may be." Dragoon admitted simply, still standing completely unmoved before the wrathful alicorn."However, I've seen the might of the Ruinous Powers and, no matter how much I may have underestimated you, I know for a fact that you cannot even muster enough power to equal even the most minute fraction of that might."

"That being said." it was at this point that Celestia returned to the conversation, stepping up to Qrow and staring straight into his prismatic eyes. "We still have no guarantee that this is not some plot, a plan you've concocted to try and conquer us. What assurance can you give me and my citizens, here and now, that you mean Equestria no harm?"

"Honestly?" the Lord of Blades asked, pushing back feelings of amusement at the idea that they would even need an elaborate plot to defeat these beings. "I can offer none, other than my word of course."

"Words mean very little at this juncture."

"T-then why don't you let us show you?" a quiet, yet assured voice spoke up from the right of Qrow. All attention turned to its source as two mares stepped into the circle of discussion, coming out from around the primarch's hulking form and standing side-by-side before the rest of the group. Sister Commander Rodrias and her interpreter, Sister-in-Waiting Tolm, had remained silent throughout most of the diplomacy discussions and this entire confrontation, so their sudden appearance was as if out of thin air to many - excepting Qrow, who had been well aware of their scheming presence.

"Show us, how?" Celestia probed cautiously, slightly perturbed by the appearance of the unsettling pair. Of all the offworlders that she'd seen so far, this Sister Commander was by far the most disconcerting of them all. Her mismatched eyes and slightly hunched gait gave the mare the visage of a predatory beast, stalking confidently in plain sight. Her constant silence only helped to cement this image in her mind, her golden plate seldom making even the slightest chink or grind as the mare moved.

"Why not send an envoy with Captain Dragoon's war party, so you may experience a war with Chaos first hand- er hoof." the interpreter explained, her tone quiet and careful - ideal for a diplomat. This second mare was nothing like her superior, to the extent where Celestia actually questioned if she was even a member of the same order. Her posture was was straight and rigid, her head was lowered slightly and her eyes showed a distinct meekness. Yet the strength and calmness in her voice betrayed her physical stance, for it showed no fear, no shyness - it was the voice of a speaker, plain and simple. The contrast between these two mares was as stark as that the one that existed between Luna's personality and Dragoon's. "W-with the permission of L-lord Q-Qrow, o-o-of course." the earth-pony mare stuttered, rounding off her suggestion with a timid glance to the stallion in question. Qrow sighed as all present gazes followed Tolm's and quickly settled on him.

"I would be willing to condone such a mission, if you'd allow my sister to travel with your troops." Princess Celestia agreed, her scrutinising stare fixed back on him again. Her request was clearly a rhetorical one; it was either accept it or leave the city to damnation and give the Apocalyptians a foothold on this world. "What say you, Lord Commander Furious Storm-Qrow?" she asked, her tone almost demanding.

"Dragoon."

"Yes sire?"

"Is there room on your gunship?" he sighed once again as he conceded, feeling the weight on his shoulders grow considerably - the burden of yet more lives pressing down hard on his mind. The captain also let out a sigh before replying, although his seemed more to be born of irritation than Qrow's, which came from the pressures of supreme leadership. Instead of replying directly to the group present, Dragoon activated his vox link and spoke into it:

"First squad, new orders. Postpone your boarding, we will take up standing positions in the Thunderhawk. That is all." his commands given, he turned back to the command parties and gestured a hoof to the waiting aerospace craft. "Ten free jumps seats, for whomever wants them." his announced, completing a sarcastic bow to the moon princess in the process. She returned the sentiment with a sneer and an indignant huff before making an announcement of her own.

"I will gather nine of my best troops!"

"B-better make that seven." Tolm spoke up again, whilst following Rodrias - who was already moving towards the craft. "Lady Rodrias and myself will also be accompanying the sixth company in their crusade." with that said, both Imperial mares accelerated their pace and boarded the Thunderhawk, disappearing into the darkness of its forward hold.

"Sure, be my guest." Dragoon grunted quickly, under his breath. He then turned to address Luna again, fixing his steely glare directly on her - clearly fed up with the situation. "We depart in five minutes, no leeway. For your own safety, you will comply with every order I give you, no 'ifs', 'ors' or 'buts'. If I tell you to duck in cover, you do it. If I tell you to get down, you drop to the floor instantly. If I tell you to run: You will. RUN. Like. Hell. Am I clear?"

"... Crystal." Luna eventually ceded, her tone even and compliant. She knew too well that war was nothing to joke about and she while she didn't like this warrior, she wasn't going to disagree with the experience his armour showed - even with the flour splotches.

The two then exchanged a nod, before they both set off in opposite directions to brief their respective soldiers. Qrow watched them go, throwing his thoughts to the future as he did so - pondering the road their interactions would take them down. Personally, he could see them becoming fast friends.

"What will my sister see when she arrives in Manehatten?" Celestia inquired as she too watched the two as they moved apart, her expression hard set and grim. Qrow could tell that the siblings had seen battle before, it was just something that showed on the face - an indescribable look in the eyes that told a trained onlooker everything - but it was unlikely that they'd ever seen anything like what the younger was going to discover at that city.

"Does your culture have a hell?" his response was flat, almost nonchalant.

"It does..."

"Your sister is going to find a city, that is begging for hell's sweet, peaceful release. She is delving into madness and bloodshed, against visions of horror that defy comprehension and astartes who have fallen under the control of such monstrosities. When she returns, she will be... changed."
> Entry V: Fear
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

ENTRY BEGINS. 2nd YEAR OF THE GRAND AGE OF EQUESTRIA





Private Jock Maintrom was scared. This didn't make him special and he knew it. Every man, woman and underage recruit in this attack force was scared. They had good reason to be. They were minutes away from another hellish deployment, in which they would be fighting against daemons, Astartes and all other manner of horrors from a murderer's worst, most bloody and violent nightmares. On top of this, they'd be doing so without their lasrifles or any of their handheld weapons - for the simple reason that they no longer had hands with which to hold them. 

Some of his fellows, like Private First Class Thorn, had been reshaped into horned equines - a form that possessed abilities that resembled those of a psyker's. Thorn had already been able to master these abilities to an extent where she could lift her rifle without even touching it. However, she and all those like her had been forbade by command from using these abilities until further notice, claiming their lack of knowledge of these powers could prove a danger to them. Most were unconvinced of this, but heeded the order anyway.

Not that any of this really mattered to Maintrom, as he possessed neither a horn nor wings. He was a drab-grey coated, dusty-brown maned earth pony, perfectly reflecting his place as just another blank face in an army of hundreds of millions.

In place of their personal weapons, most of the the Imperial troopers had been paired up and had essentially all become heavy-weapons teams. All those who hadn't found themselves in this role were either assigned as gunners on tanks and aircraft (operating on additional guns, placed on vehicles in response to the bodily changes) or they had been conscripted into close-quarters assault teams. He was glad to have avoided that fate, the casualty rates of those teams were high enough even before the changes.

Instead, he would be operating a field autocannon with with PFC Thorn. There were worse guns to man and worse partners to have, but he would have still much preferred a position as a secondary gunner on a Leman Russ or a Valkyire. His whole body was shaking, causing his jump harness to rattle slightly louder than everypony else's. But, upon taking a glance around the upper hold of the Devourer class dropship he was occupying, he noticed that no pony was paying his terrified shuddering any mind. They were all far too busy dealing with their own fears in their own way - some tending to weapons and ammunition, others huddled in small groups and uttered hushed prayers to The Emperor. 

He looked back to the Imperial pendant he was balancing on his left hoof. They weren't meant to pray to Him, He refused the title and role of a god, but that didn't stop many from treating Him like one, Maintrom included.

"Guide my aim, Lord. Guard me from the temptations of monsters and daemons. By Your light, I am protected." he whispered to the Aquila emblazoned on his pendant, hastily touching it to his forehead before storing it back behind his flak armour carapace.

"Making your final peace, Jockey?" a distinctly familiar voice chuckled, its mockery amounting to nothing more than familiar banter. Thorn smiled at her loader as she approached him, although it was clearly an effort for her to maintain its position on her face and her deep teal eyes gave away her trepidation. She settled into her own jump harness, next to his, and gave the stallion a firm slap on the back, offering him a cheeky grin as she did so. Maintrom was far more reserved than Thorn, so he only returned her boisterous greeting with a small smile, a slight nod and a murmur of:

"Something like that."

"Good man. No point leaving behind regrets." she replied, her smile only continuing to grow as their conversation continued. Being around the withdrawn male never failed to put her in a better mood, as contradictory as that may sound to any outsider to their relationship. Before they could continue their conversation, she caught sight of one such outsider, approaching the pair from across the deck. Her bright grin quickly devolving into a baleful scowl. "Heads up, Private Pissant approaching at two o'clock."

Private First Class Alms Prizant, better known to his fellows as 'Private Pissant', was a hunter-noble from the Knight's Nobilis World Fleet's most prestigious vessel - The Triumph of Dawn. He wore his family's esteemed honour as if it were a badge of office, even going as far as insulting superior officers to their faces and talking down on every last soul who so much as occupied the same room as him. He especially enjoyed flaunting around the two he was now advancing towards, as he knew that his mere presence caused Thorn's cream coloured coat to prickle and that Mainstrom was far too mild mannered to ever allow her to do anything about it.

He was near their seat row now, coming down the aisle to the right of them, his smirk was so confident it was physically sickening to Thorn. As he got closer still, her shaggy, amber tail began to curl towards the 3-inch field-autocannon that sat just in front of her and Jock. However, the latter reached over and placed his hoof on her shoulder, fixing her with a firm stare and shaking his head in warning. He was still shaking in terror, but he wasn't going to sit back and watch his comrade do something she might regret, not now.

Prizant noticed him holding her in place, spurring a brief burst of snickers from the high-class recruit. He then took a breath and opened his mouth, to begin his deluge of snide remarks and pompous comments. Maintrom was ready for them, he didn't care, having little self respect to begin with meant that the rude judgements of another mattered very little to him. So, he braced himself instead to hold back Thorn if, no he was almost certain it was, when the need arouse. But it never did. Pissant didn't get to utter a single word.

His voice was stolen by a sudden, explosive roar and the wretched shrieks of tearing metal - emanating from the trio's eleven o'clock. Less than a millisecond later, Alms Prizant was gone. Obliterated by a passing... something. Jock only saw a flash of blinding light, passing from his left to right in an instant - promptly removing everything in its path from existence as it went, the sneering private included. 

No one aboard the dropship had any time whatsoever to react to the removal of one of their own from the mortal plane, for as soon as the flash had torn through the ship its affects could be felt. 

The entry explosion was swiftly succeeded by the uproar of explosive decompression. Troopers, ammunition, weapons and metal scraps were rapidly and violently sucked bodily from the ship, out through the gaping wound in the adamantine hull of the vessel. 

Next came a death howl, the spluttering whine of a failing drive engine. The sound of racing air never faded, even after the ship had completely depressurised, for now they were already falling. 

And above all this reigned the terrible din of battle beginning outside the Devourer's broken form; the sounds of explosions, gunshots, las-screams and missile roars.

Maintrom was lifted up from his seat, his movement only halted by his jump harness, as the ship began its terrible, screaming free fall. His organs leapt up in his chest, his mind spun and raced, his stomach emptied itself as the G-forces pushed the food up through his body and out his mouth. Thorn and every other tied down soldier fared no better. They were all being thrown around in their seats as the huge craft began its death roles and Mainstrom could feel himself being pushed back with more and more force, indicating that their spiralling downward arc was rapidly becoming steeper and faster.

"BRACE! BRACE! BRACE!" the warning klaxons blared over the screaming of the air and the ship's occupants.

Prizant had only been dead for five seconds.





Princess Luna shifted awkwardly in her seat, the hydraulic jump harness almost crushing her in her armour like a tin of peaches. She was sat in the forward hold of this 'Thunderhawk', in the right row of five seats that lined either side of the tight, metal space. The rest of said row was occupied by four of her personal guard, while the other three were located in the main hold - and all of them appeared to be fairing no better in their restraints than she was her's.

The row on the left was also fully occupied, by the two Sisters of Silence and three space marines - all of whom were showing no signs of any discomfort whatsoever. The two mares were sat side-by-side, heads down and eyes closed with the younger of the pair muttering something feverishly in tones too quiet for Luna to make out. This mare she had no problems with, she seemed a bit too timid to truly be a soldier in the Moon Princess' opinion, but overall she was not an unpleasant pony. The sister-commander, on the other hoof, was a different matter entirely. Her presence seemed to drop the temperature of any room she was in by several degrees, her gaze was as piercing as it was cold and she seemed to radiate with killer intent - the need to murder emanating off her in relentless waves. 

Rodrias was dangerous and Luna had every intention of keeping one eye firmly fixed on her, but that made concentrating somewhat difficult as her other eye was firmly fixed on Captain Dragoon. 

He and four of his command squad were stood, single file, in the central reservation of the forward hold, performing their final weapons checks - loading wrist mounted 'bolters' and inspecting the functionality of their individual melee weapons. She watched one warrior heft a mighty, metal fist up closer to his face and with a flick of his hoof, ignited the entire metal construct with arcing bolts of electricity.

"Wow..." Silent Arrow, Princess Luna's chief batpony guard and loyal sharpshooter, breathed in awe - halting in her scrutiny of her foreleg crossbows to marvel at the foreign weapon. She even ignored the sideways glare shot at her by the princess, although she could hardly be blamed for this, it was a strangely hypnotic sight. However, all focus was broken away from the arcing gauntlet by a dry chuckle from its wearer.

"Ha. If it awes you now, you should have seen it on the day it was fresh off the forge." came the deep, humoured rumble from the warrior's vox speaker. He appeared to be staring at his weapon, much like the Equestrians - but not with awe as they were, instead he looked upon it in peaceful reverie. Although the roaring image of his golden dragon's head helm made him appear overcome by bestial fury, his voice was calm and flowing, not giving true sound to the age his armour suggested. "It crackles with only half of its original might, like its dusty old wielder." his laugh this time was a tad harsher, almost spiteful. Not like the one that soon followed it;

"Don't not be so harsh on yourself, honoured sergeant." the warrior from the back of the file called to the old knight without looking at him. This stallion's battle plate was far less adorned than that of the ancient sitting before Luna, almost completely devoid of golden pinions and jewelled mantles, he sported only a laurel wreath of shining gold across the brow of his helm, as did every member of the sixth company first squad. On top of this, he also sounded a lot younger - his voice rounding out at a few pitches higher than his veteran peers. "This company would be nothing without you."

The old hero didn't really respond to that, simply grunting and returning to his maintenance.

"Do not take our standard bearer's words lightly, my friend." a familiar voice spoke from the front of the pack, its owner turning his head back to address the sergeant behind him. "Without your brave actions, sixth company would have been annihilated aboard the Pallidus Alpha."

"Actions I would have not been able to perform in the first place if you had not marshalled us so well, especially considering that you had just watched your predecessor get cut down by an Ork." the marines present bowed their heads at this statement, honouring their long fallen leader's sacrifice that fateful day on the lost Battle Barge in orbit over Ullanor.

"What was his name?" Luna asked quietly, her curiosity eventually winning over her resentment of the captain somewhat. Not enough, however, to stop her from glaring at him as she questioned. He turned his head to half-face her, his deep crimson eye lenses staring blankly back at her. Several tense seconds past before he responded in a calm, almost wistful tone.

"Adume. Hacke Adume, was the Dragoon and leader of Sixth company before me."

"The Dragoon before you? You mean to say that your name is not Dragoon?" her question caused the Sixth captain to sigh, as it was a subject he did not often enjoy discussing - to the extent that he often went out of his way to avoid the topic of his title and how it was bestowed upon him. He was not surprised by her mistake though, since he had introduced himself only as Dragoon during their first contact. Thankfully, however, he would not have to answer the query himself.

"The Dragoon is the title given to the leader of House Dragoon, one of the four Noble Houses that our legion is divided into. Twenty-Four companies - each comprised of five thousand Astartes, divided evenly among four houses." the 'honoured sergeant' replied for his leader, knowing how sore a subject it could be for his friend. The equestrians were awed, as (after only a brief touch of mental maths) they realised that the stallion at the front of the aircraft's hold was in direct command of some thirty thousand super soldiers.

"My name, is Ozonus Prowl." the grizzled leader said quietly, looking at Luna straight on this time - speaking only really to her, as the rest of the hold's occupants were now talking fervently amongst themselves. The princess stared quizzically at the Astartes for a moment, searching for any sign of deceit or emotion at all through his glaring visor slits. But alas, the thick, blood red glass pieces blocked her attempts.

"Maybe, once this combat is over..." Luna began, turning away from the hulking warrior and giving her battle claws one last inspection. "... and providing you're able to prove your expertise in it - I might reveal my full name to you."

Suffice to say, Dragoon was more than little confused by this statement. What possible impact could her full name have on him? Why did she believe it was important to him that he know it at all? All mundane questions to be considered at a later date, for now... he thought as his vox link began to beep, informing him that someone was trying to make contact with him over a frequency that he currently wasn't active on - an Imperial Army command frequency. For now, we go to war.

With a thought, he connected to the channel and was greeted by an ear-full of gunshots, explosions and screaming. Definitely an Imperial Army frequency. He had absolutely nothing against the 'Un-augmented', as the humans were known as by the Swords, but he was certainly very aware of their flaws - with low pain tolerance being a common weakness shared by most of them.

"You have reached Dragoon, captain of the Sixth company." he spoke evenly into the vox, unfazed by the horrific symphony of war in the background. "With whom am I speaking and why have you contacted me?" he found himself waiting an irritatingly long time for a response, hearing only the din of combat with a voice frantically yelling orders over it all.

"Shore up those barricades dammit, the bastards are getting through! Leman Russ Iron Throne, advance! SHIT! INCOMING!!" once again, the channel erupted with sound - howls of pain, shearing metal and monstrous roars filling the captain's ears, but still failed to even cause him to flinch. He was used to this. "PUSH THEM BACK, YOU BLOODY COWARDS! Hello? Lord Dragoon?"

Finally

"This is Dragoon, my force is a matter of minutes away from the landing zone. What is the situation at the front, trooper?"

"My Lord! Thank the Emperor, you're almost here. It's looking pretty grim down here though, sir." the stallion on the other end of the channel almost laughed into the vox, before his voice turned as grim as his news. "That be damned destroyer is holding position just above the city's skyline, making it near impossible to get any transports in close. Only my Devourer was able to reach the LZ intact, all the others had to put down further away."

"I can confirm that, sir." the Thunderhawk's pilot briefly cut in. "We have just passed over the main army landing force and the city is still just out of sight.

"Get us low, pilot." Dragoon commanded quickly. Even though their craft were smaller, faster and more manoeuvrable than the Army dropships, they would still be easy pickings for that destroyer's defence guns at high altitudes. The effects of his order were immediate, as the 'Hawk lurched into a shallow dive. "What else have you to report, trooper?"

"Well sir..." the soldier began, but was swiftly cut off by a tremendous *BANG*, that sounded remarkably close to the trooper and was accompanied by a cry of "The track's been blown off!". "Damn. The city is built upon an island, connected to the land by a number of bridges. All but one of those were destroyed by a local military group, so we've been able to hold the enemy at the last remaining bridge."

"There are survivors from within the city?" the Sixth Captain asked incredulously, as a daemonic onslaught was a very hard event to walk away from both alive and sane. He felt the tingling sense of suspicion begin to crawl it way up his spine, as the prospect that these 'survivors' might in fact be traitors entered his thoughts. He would need to inspect them thoroughly himself when they arrived.

He was broken from his thoughts as the Thunderhawk levelled out and a klaxon gave out a loud squawk as the lights within the transport all went out and were replaced by the dim, crimson glow of the imminent deployment signal.

"Landing zone in sight, all troops prepare to disembark." the pilot's voice echoed through the transport from several vox speakers mounted around the holds. Following the announcement a quiet shuffling began in the rear hold and a quick glance to her left told Luna that this was the sound of the Astartes in the back removing themselves from their harnesses and taking up standing positions, ready to exit the craft as soon as it touched down.

"Princess." the sergeant called out to her. When she turned to face him, she found him extending his left hoof to her and in its centre was a rounded, cone-shaped, metal object. It was around the size of a gobstopper and one side was made up of a criss-crossing mesh tiny of metal wires, while the other was adorned with a simple button. She was given no time to theorise as to what it was, however, as the armoured stallion informed her before she could ask. "It's a vox earpiece. It's connected to the Sixth's command frequency, it'll make it easier for you to communicate with us in the field. You'll hear anything transmitted by any command squad member or any of the other squad leaders and if you want to impart something; just press the button on the outside and speak."

"I see..." she muttered as she lift the piece up to her face with her magic, to inspect it further. Finding nothing to be suspicious about, she then placed the little device in her left ear and was soon greeted by the sergeant's voice once again, but only in that ear this time.

"The Captain thought you should have one, easier than screaming across the battlefield at you. Good luck down there." with that said, he turned away from her and stood up, ready to go. 

No sooner than he had done so, the entire transport was rocked by a tremendous explosion. The members of the Night Guard screamed and clung to their harnesses for dear life, as the dropship shuddered and banked hard to the right. Even Luna gasped and clenched her teeth as the aerospace-craft entered a 60 degree bank and shallow dive. But what shocked her more than the manoeuvres themselves; was the sight of the Astartes remaining standing throughout them. They clung to the floor-turned-wall like hulking armoured insects, seemingly unfazed by the wild and erratic flying.

"Incoming flak fire, everyone brace." the pilot ordered, however late said order may have been. The 'Hawk' levelled out  again and the pilot called over the vox once more. "Igniting afterburners for final approach."

With a *boom*, equally as thunderous as the anti-aircraft fire, they shot forward towards the front line. The procession of Thunderhawks had been forced so low by the destroyer's defensive fire, that they were practically skimming the grass as they screamed towards the Imperial Army rear lines. The Arc Phantom spat furiously at them, trying desperately to down them before its tainted weapons were blocked by the city's skyline, but to no avail. 

The six transports all made it, relatively, unscathed into the cover provided by Manehatten's tallest buildings and immediately after they had, dropped their throttles, deployed air-brakes and began to slow rapidly as they were now inches away from skimming the helmets of the army troopers with their landing skids as they went. With only tens of yards left to go before they reached their designated LZ, the pilots flared their craft and seconds later set down hard. 

A tense few moments passed inside the hold of the lead Thunderhawk following the landing. All there was to do for the several precious seconds before all hell broke loose was to wait and listen to the horrific din of battle howling from outside the transport's armoured walls. The Equestrian soldiers were quivering a little, this war had already almost killed them and they hadn't even seen the enemy yet. The Sisters of Silence sat, completely motionless and eyes closed, in their harnesses - but Rodrias had deployed a set of hooked battle claws from her gauntlets at some point during the hellish approach. The Astartes stood firm and ready, silently awaiting yet another call to battle. The call of humanity, of their legion, of their Emperor, the call of...

The klaxon let out its final, demented screech and the ready lights flashed green. With a heavy clunk the ramp was unsealed and released, hitting the soft ground with a sodden thump. But this sound was drowned out by the deafening cacophony that flooded into the hold from outside.

"BROTHERS, CHARGE!" Dragoon roared as he bolted from the transport, with astounding speed for a stallion of his size and mass, and disappeared from Luna's view, into the blinding light beyond. His call was answered by the furious shouts of his fellows as they thundered after their leader. When the last hulking warrior had exited the vehicle, the two mares rose from their reveries and barrelled right out after him, with Tolm offering the Equestrians a brief nod and a mouthed:

"Good luck" before following her mistress out into battle, foreleg blades glinting in the light.

Luna removed herself from her own harness and stood briefly in the isle of the forward hold, staring out into the glaring light beyond the hull of the craft. She was quickly surrounded by her own soldiers, each one looking expectantly to her for orders. She looked back to each of them, taking note of the fear in their eyes, the trepidation in their bodies and the determination in their spirits.

"Know this, all of you..." the Princess of the Night began, taking a step or two back so she could see all of her audience as she spoke. "I will not force you to follow me out there." she said with a grim nod to the shining exit behind her, as screams and explosions filtered in through it. As if cued to help emphasise her point, a particularly loud shriek echoed from outside as a silhouette shaped like a distinctly non-pegasus pony flew past the opening. "Beyond these metal confines, will be untold horrors in untold numbers and forms. You will be fighting daemons, super-soldiers and possibly even your fellow Equestrians - driven mad by these Ruinous Powers. This battle will be dangerous, bloody and I cannot guarantee your safety."

"I cannot force you to fight horrors that even Discord himself couldn't dream up, monsters that you were never trained to fight and your own fellows in the Manehatten police forces and guard. But... I am asking if you will. If you will stand, charge and fight with me against this new threat to our home. Will you defend your homes with all your might? Will you stand against giants, with giants?! WILL YOU BE THE HEROES EQUESTRIA NEEDS, HERE AND NOW?!!!"

"AYE PRINCESS!" her Night Guard yelled in response, thrusting their hooves into the air and flaring their leathery wings. Sure they were scared, but that was no excuse to back down - not in the face of a threat such as this.

"THEN COME, FOLLOW ME! FOR EQUESTRIA!" Luna's battle cry echoed throughout the ship as she turned and stormed from it. Her own determination burned bright in her eyes and she had to admit, a small part of her was pleased to be back in the fight for her home. Even she could not help but feel some trepidation as she exited the Thunderhawk, but unlike most, she had the resolve to not let it show. She could hide her fear.

"FOR EQUESTRIA!" her warriors repeated her cry in kind, charging with their princess into battle.





"Bloody hell, someone sure up those damn barricades!" First Lieutenant Bailey Enart yelled from his crippled Leman Russ, firing its pintle mounted stubber on full-auto, unleashing streams of metal death into the seemingly endless tide of corrupted ponies advancing inexorably toward the Imperial Army's fourth and final defensive line. He was absolutely terrified, but he did not let that stop him from screaming his orders, nor did he stop shooting the Emperor be-damned creatures before him. His fear did not make him special, so he did not let it consume him. He fought on as he always had, despite his unfamiliarity with his current form.

It felt odd, operating the heavy weapon with hooves - the trigger guard had to be removed so they could pull the trigger with their finger-less appendages. But Enart was just glad to be operating the device at all, it had saved his life when a group of screaming pegasi had dived on them from above. They were little more than stains on the tanks and ground now, first shredded mercilessly by a storm of stubber rounds then the rest splattered against the layered adamantite plates and unforgiving floor.

He was also thankful that they hadn't been transformed and resized into the ponies found in their home realm, as in that case, this tank would be quite a bit too big for them to operate. Or had they? Maybe they had, and their equipment had simply been rescaled to work best for them? 

"Ah, who gives a shit?!" he yelled to himself just as the battle cannon roared and spat it's fury, as the machine spirit of the Hell Raiser agreed with him - the mighty battle tank was far more concerned with the foe it was facing down and the repair of its tracks, than it was with the great philosophies of this world.

The other tanks surrounding them agreed with the lead tank's sentiment, adding their own voices once more to the symphony of cannon fire, heavy-las discharges and plasma screams that rended the air and harmonised perfectly with the screams and cries of those they targeted. And yet, even as the blistering barrage poured forth nonstop from the battle line and into the Chaos' lines, their enemy continued on - making constant, inching progress towards the waiting army troopers. Hundreds-of-thousands of ponies, their faces contorted into horrific, simultaneous expressions of joy, pain, terror, pleasure and many more ever-contradicting emotions. They were screaming, crying, laughing and moaning all at once, in a terrible orchestra whose volume almost matched that of the roaring Imperial guns.

Their daemonic chorus was backed up from the other side of the "Herdson" River by Traitorous artillery fire, their own cannon fire roaring against the loyalists' guns. 

The daemonic assault poured, non-stop, over the last of Manehatten's great bridges and out onto the flat lands beyond. Had one lone Imperial dropship not dropped in a suicide dive under the Arc Phantom's guns as Enart's had, then the heretical tide would have spread out too far for the small Army force to effectively contain. And the loyalist Equestrians would have surely been doomed.

The Lieutenant dared to take a second to glance back and observe said ponies, nodding with satisfaction as they were tended to by medics and the loyalty masters. His eyes settled on the unicorn leader of the pony troop; Guard Captain Dusty Skies, the closest thing these ponies seemed to have to a grizzled veteran. His coat was a pale blue, darkened in places by sweat and dry blood. His mane and tail were a stark hue of white, protruding from his head as a tight mohawk and from his rear end as a short, spikey tuft.

Curiously, Enart had noticed, the Equestrian ponies all had far more colour and variance in their coat and hair than the Imperials did. All his troops possessed very drab, dulled hues of basic colours - while the natives had far more deviation of their personal chroma. It was intriguing, but far from his highest priority thought at that moment.

The Hell Raiser's main gun roared again, it's massive APHE shell cutting a swath through the approaching enemies before detonating in their midst, showering those not caught in the blast with a downpour of crimson viscera. But the gaps in the advance were filled in near instantly, as they continued to flow through the devastated first Imperial line of defence with vile purpose. They were so close now that some of the flying gore splattered onto the lead trooper's face as he opened up once again with his stubber, focusing down the lead ponies - some part of his mind quietly hoping that their allies would trip on the maimed corpses.

No such luck. The survivors ploughed on, unconcerned for those who they had to trample to advance their charge. They were within spitting distance of the tank battlefront, close enough for him to smell the wretched stench of the decaying ones and the horribly sensuous perfumes of those who'd fallen to the Dark Prince of Pleasure. Soon enough, he'd probably be cutting them from his command hatch with his sword, not that he could wield it very well anymore. He was no unicorn. Just a beige coated Earth pony, with a dull blond, shaved mane and tail. He'd be near to useless in melee in this form, his las-pistol and power sword rendered unusable by his lack of hands and fingers.

But he'd be damned if he would let that stop him from serving his duty to The One. By the Emperor's mighty name, he'd gnaw the bastards to death if he had to. So;

"LET THEM COME BOYS AND GIRLS!!" he yelled, shredding his lungs as he loosed his rallying cry into the open vox. "THEY MAY BE NUMEROUS, THEY MAY HAVE THEIR 'GODS', THEY MAY BE ON THEIR HOME TURF! BUT THOSE ADVANTAGES DIDN'T SAVE THE CALIPSIAN SYSTEM'S DEFENDERS AND IT SURE AS HELL AIN'T GONNA SAVE THESE GORMLESS GITS NOW!"

The heretic ponies began vaulting the wire traps, plunging into the trenches to engage the melee teams tooth and hoof. Enart wracked them with stubber rounds and they leapt, causing many to flop lifelessly into the combat or simply explode mid-jump, raining blood and shredded organs down onto the soldiers and the damned clashing below.

"WE WILL GUN THEM DOWN WITH OUR BOLTERS!" he continued, as some of the mindless pony husks began leaping clean over the dug outs and onto the heavy weapons teams behind them. The pegasi travelled even further, slamming into the hulls of the Leman Russ tanks with sickening crunches.

"WE WILL GRIND THEM TO MULCH BENEATH OUR TREADS!" the tank crews took this statement as an order, and the freshly retracked Hell Raiser lead a thundering counter attack - skewering equines on its spiked battle plough and pulverising them under iron tracks.

"AND WE WILL CRUSH THEM WITH THE STRENGTH OF OUR FAITH AND BELIEF! BROTHERS! SISTERS! COMRADES!" he maintained his strong voice and level tone, even as a demented unicorn mare bounded clean over the tank and straight at him, jabbering madly as her hooves, teeth and misshapen horn all honed in on the Army Lieutenant. He had no time to turn the stubber against her. He wouldn't be able to reach his sword in time either. He only had time to finish his call to arms."

"FOR THE EMPEROR!!!!" he barely had time to sign off from the vox before a massive shadow eclipsed him, a hulking form passing over head devoid of all sound except for a quiet;

"Well said." then the shadow passed, its owner careening into the bloodthirsty female and breaking her against its indomitable metal bulk.

Captain Ozonus Prowl, the Great Beast; Dragoon - was not afraid. This made him special. This made him mighty. This was what made him a proud member of The Emperor's finest.

This is what made him a Space Marine.
> Entry VI: Massacre Outside Manehatten
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

ENTRY BEGINS. 2nd YEAR OF THE GRAND AGE OF EQUESTRIA





"ON YOUR FEET PRIVATE!" a voice roared over the piercing ringing that plagued Jock Maintrom's sense of hearing, its urgency and authority kicking his weak and battered mind into high gear. Opening his eyes and pushing his flak helmet up away from his face revealed a towering Loyalty Master, clad in a resplendent, crimson overcoat and cap of the office. The stallion's coat of fur was a very dark grey and his mane was shaved entirely, leaving only patch of blond stubble between his ears. "Find your partner and man your weapon, trooper! We don't have time for you to be laying around idle under wreckage!" with that said the harsh pony moved on to continue rousing other troopers from unconsciousness.

Pulling himself free of the plate of sheet metal hull that had landed on him, Maintrom scrambled to his hooves and stared scanning the crash site for his autocannon and comrade. What he found was a scene of total and utter annihilation. Army mares and stallions were scattered around and under an avalanche of torn dropship, collapsed concrete and shattered glass. Many seemed to have been killed outright upon impact, their heads broken open against rubble or their bodies pierced by metal and wooden beams.

"Where did we crash?" the young pony whispered to himself as he observed his bloody surroundings and in doing so, answered his own question. Naught but a few feet behind where he'd been lying was a great opening out into a shear drop off into oblivion. He was standing within a skyscraper, looking out of a great tear in its Western flank - straight at the roof of a shorter structure, where half of his broken dropship sat. Fuel and hydraulic fluid spilled from severed pipelines, pouring down the side of the building in a similar fashion to the sewage drains of overpopulated hive cities.

He turned back to look into the building he stood in and found a mighty chasm, torn into the structure by the forward half of the downed devourer. It wasn't sitting level in its grave either, leaning with its rear end pointing down into the decimated office block. Ponies, tanks, ammunition and fuel continued to tumble from the yawning hole that was once the ship's centre, piling up in a crumpled and saturated heap not far from Maintrom. With every addition to the mountain of dead bodies and torn metal, the floor below creaked and complained that little bit louder - the building showing its displeasure at having to support such weight and impact forces.

Then he saw them, PFC Thorn and the wheeled-autocannon, the former pinned beneath the latter not far from the scrapyard's worth of metal, bullets and blood.

"Amara!" he cried out, taking off at an uneasy gallop towards the pinned mare. How had the Astartes on the training track made this running on all fours thing look so easy? It was all he could manage not fall flat on his face, coordinating all these legs to move in unison. Despite the awkwardness of his dash, it didn't take him long to reach his friend - finding her to be unconscious and bleeding heavily from a large split in her head. It looked bad, but not critically so, at least he couldn't see the bone of her skull.

Thorn's barrel was trapped beneath the gun breach and central structure of the upturned autocannon, so Maintrom put himself below the cannon barrel and attempted to force it upwards. But the weapon's full-metal frame and ammo stores made it incredibly heavy, too much for the stallion to lift alone. But a single I.A. trooper was never expected to do anything alone, as it was their numbers that was their true advantage.

"Hang on Maintrom, we gotcha back!" a gruff voice called over, growing louder as it spoke. Soon enough, another pony was positioned below the barrel and with a third pony pushing down on the trails, the field cannon was leveraged off Thorn - allowing a fourth pony to rush in and pull her free.

Maintrom barely waited at all to get out from under the barrel hurrying over to Thorn and the Medic tending to her wounds. The survivors of the forward half of Devourer #295, quickly formed up around the medic and suffice to say it was an abysmal sight.

There were nine of them in total: Six basic troopers, counting himself and Thorn, the Medic, the Loyalty Master and a Mechanicus Priest. Five earth ponies, two pegasi and two unicorns, of the hundreds that had been aboard the craft when it had left the Excalibur less than an hour ago. Among the troopers were only two non-commissioned officers; Corporal Carnalt and Maintrom's own CO, Sergeant Franklin - the pony who'd helped the young stallion to lift the barrel.

"What's the plan Sarge?" Carnalt asked hastily, watching the great gash in the building with his sharp, eagle-like eyes. His wings twitched at his sides, anxious to escape the confines of his flak armour and get him out of this crumbling office spire. They appeared to be only kept in by the straps of his las-sniper and his fierce loyalty to his superiors.

"We need to get out of this tower for a start." the large stallion replied gruffly, his sights fixed on the groaning support struts above them and the wreck of their landing craft. "This entire place could come tumbling down at any moment and I'd much rather be elsewhere when it does."

"We could abseil out the opening we came in through." a trooper suggested, the name 'Laccous' inscribed on her helmet, one of the earth ponies. "Hell, those with wings could just fly out."

"No." Carnalt admonished curtly, briefly turning to address the mare directly. "Hostile forces have this building surrounded, the only reason they haven't reached us yet is because of our altitude and the destruction of many of the access ways to the upper floors by our landing."

"So that takes using the stairs and fighting our way through outta the equation too..." a male trooper called 'Xerxes' muttered, just loud enough for everyone else to hear, his own wings twitching and ruffled like the corporal's.

"And it also removes the possibility of making our way to the roof and signalling for evac." the medic, 'Kadnikov', grumbled as she saw to Thorn's head wound with what little medical supplies she had and her hopelessly bumbling hooves.

"We couldn't have done that anyway, with that destroyer up there anything they sent for us would be shot down instantly, leaving us to be shredded like sitting ducks." Franklin growled, scanning a wider area around the gash for more possible options. Maybe we can zip line over to the other building, link up with more survivors there...

"The answer to our plight is a simple one." the Tech Priest droned, stating his suggestion as if it were painfully obvious. "We use the great machines that the Omnissiah has bestowed upon us."

"What machines?!" the corporal snarled irritably at the mostly-mechanical unicorn stood beside him. "All the tanks were destroyed by the crash!"

"Incorrect, corporal." if his voice wasn't a monotone, synthetic garble emitted from an aged vox speaker, Carnalt would have sworn that Mechanicus adept was speaking in a smug fashion. The cyborg stallion slowly lifted a prosthetic, adamantite hoof and pointed to a spot to the right of the still growing scrap heap. "I have spotted a rugged survivor of our misfortune."

All eyes turned to follow his pointing hoof and they quickly lit up, as a spark of hope ignited in their chests. For, sitting less than 25 yards from the group was a lone god of war. Standing proud and right on its massive tracks, gigantic main weapons still firmly intact and power plant still growling quietly. Before them was the pride of their late Captain, Basarian Dedtaro -  the Baneblade super-heavy tank; Dragon's Teeth.

"Does anyone have experience driving a Baneblade?" Franklin questioned the group hurriedly, looking over the ponies around him - fighting back a sigh when no hooves were punched enthusiastically into the air. Only one hoof was raised at all, Maintrom's shaking forelimb rose slowly from the middle of the congregation, where he still sat beside his downed teammate. Over the course of the conversation between his impromptu squad mates, he'd slowly been falling apart. All the excitement and drive to save Thorn had faded away under the realisation that they were but nine troopers, cut off and surrounded in the centre of enemy territory. Not nine Astartes, not nine Imperial Knights and not nine Titans - nine Imperial Army troopers with one tank and nothing else.

"I-I've never driven a Baneblade b-before, sir." he began quietly, his voice as shaky as his body. He was only very mildly injured, a few scrapes on his back and a large bruise under his chin, but nothing bad. However, he was clearly mentally damaged - PTSD a very real thing for the soldiers of the Imperial Army and once the adrenaline that had been coursing through his body had faded away the young private was left a mess. "B-but I h-have got experience i-in a L-Leman Russ..."

"I know ya do, lad. But that ain't gonna help us here..."

"That is incorrect. The control systems for the Leman Russ were built to emulate those of the Baneblade STC. Experience in one can be transferred to some extent to the other. I will also be on hand to offer guidance if the need should arise." the Tech Priest's matter-of-fact explanation left all eyes on the young private, waiting expectantly from his answer to the unasked question. Maintrom recoiled under their hopeful watch, not used to being the centre of such positive attention. From this point on, the collective fates of all those in the tower weighed squarely upon his shoulders and if he should fail in his duty then their deaths would be solely his fault. 

He couldn't handle such pressure and was on the verge of breaking down into tears when he felt something push lightly against the breast plate of his flak armour. Looking down he saw, barely through the sting of salty tears, a cream coated hoof and forelimb, spattered with flecks of crimson and dust. Following the limb back to the body it was attached to with his gaze, Maintrom found Amara Thorn looking up at him with one eye and offering him a small smile.

"Drive us home, Jockey." she whispered, her voice little more than the rustle of a single leaf in a tornado - but her oldest friend heard it well enough. She slipped back out of consciousness as quickly as she'd been roused into it, her hoof falling from its place on the battered flak plate. Maintrom caught it before it hit the shattered marble floor and laid it to rest across the mare's chest, rose up to his hooves and pound his right hoof over his heart.

"I'll drive it, sir. I'll get us the hell outta this shit-storm and back to the Excalibur." If Thorn needs me to, then I'll do it. I owe her too much to let her down. Franklin laughed and clapped the smaller stallion hard on the shoulder, a bout of smiles rising amongst the squad as he did.

"Love the enthusiasm, lad. But we need to finish the job we came here to do before we can leave." he received a strong nod from the private, which he returned before standing tall to address all his remaining troops. "We've lost a great many brave comrades here today, but we have no time to grieve. For now we can best honour them by surviving to fight on in their stead."

"Maintrom, you and the Tech Priest will make directly for the Baneblade - get it running and ready to leave."

"Sir!"

"Affirmative." the two didn't hesitate to before setting off in the direction of the patiently waiting war machine, the private's hoof coordination visibly improved when compared with his earlier run.

"Medic Kadnikov, you will take Private Thorn to the tank and continue to tend to her there."

"Right." the white coated mare nodded, quickly getting her patient on her back with help from Carnalt and rapidly moved to catch up with the other two.

"The rest of us will scour this area for supplies; rations, med-kits, ammunition, the works. Do not leave this floor and under no circumstances go near that hole. We meet at the Baneblade in ten minutes time, no later. I am I understood?" the sergeant's orders were met with a resounding "SIR, YES SIR!" before the remaining four ponies of his impromptu squad split off to hunt through the wreck of their dropship for anything useful.

"Let's just hope the winds are with us..." the grizzled stallion muttered under his breath, slugging his battered helmet over his buzz-cut of auburn mane and tan coat, setting off into the collection of fallen office cubicles in search of his pack of cigars.





Dragoon was silent as he fought, a Grim Reaper among howling war dogs, as he and his astartes pushed a growing wedge into the force of corrupted Equestrians. Fighting these ponies was nothing to him, their skulls offered no resistance to his hooves as they passed through them, their bodies broke as they threw themselves at his armour and their screams of defiance, mercy or lust fell upon deaf ears. The only parts of his body that he had to worry about were his wings and tail, for they extended outside the protective layers of his power armour. He did not truly worry about these exposed body parts, however, despite the fact that he couldn't see more than a foot ahead through the thronging mass of screaming ponies. His reaction speeds and vision were far too sharp to allow his foes to flank around him and attack these weak points.

This, of course, never stopped them from trying.

A diseased pegasus stallion came leaping at his left side, sailing clean over Honoured Sergeant Bellerophon and aiming its sharpened fangs and grotesque claws of bone at the Captain's wing. But he'd been spotted as soon as he'd bounded free of the greater crowd and by the time he reached his target he'd already been impaled through the chest on the crackling blades of Dragoon's lightning claws.

Rotting flesh burned and combusted on contact with the power field encased adamantium, leaving the demented pony gargling on his own boiling blood and screaming for only a split second before his life ended. Unabashed by the winged pony's agonising end, the Sixth Captain simply swung his left hoof back into the horde before him - sending the blazing corpse crashing into its hellish fellows and spreading the flames.

"A decent start..." he mused quietly to himself as he slashed his right limb through four more attackers coming from his twelve to his three o'clock. The ponies he'd struck fell dead as soon as the claws passed through them, the powered weapons disrupting their very atoms and leaving deep rends in their wake that spilled blood in the same way a pipe spills water and sewage. He'd already moved onto his next targets before they even hit the ground, his blades moving cleanly from pony to grotesque mutant to jabbering heretic with a seamless grace of movement one might expect from a great dancer or conductor. Certainly not from a towering mass of pegasus stallion wearing a tank's worth of armour and equipment.

However, he was not as efficient with his movements as he wished he was. His quadrupedal form forced him to take valuable seconds to place one of his forelegs back on the ground, to balance his very front heavy stature. He was more than tempted to spread his wings backwards, to offer some balancing weight and allow him to prolong his time on his hide legs. But he suppressed this desire, as it would ultimately expose his wings to attack and put them right into the path of the arms fire exchange, occurring mere inches overhead, between the Imperial tanks and the Traitor's field artillery.

"But this ember must become a great blaze before we're done here..." he growled into the vox, effortlessly cutting down another group of assailants with his left claws as they leapt at him. His counterattack had grabbed the full attention of the attacking Chaos Fallen, with all of the corrupt ponies now attempting to break through the ruthless spearhead of super-soldiers that had been driven into their midst. Their every attempt failed, shattering against the wall of ceremite and warrior zeal, but now Dragoon found he couldn't drive his attack any deeper without overextending himself. So now they were at a stalemate, the wave unable to break the rock but the rock immobilised by its own strength.

"Say no more, Lord." an astartes' voice answered his demand and as it did a great shape loomed to the right of the wedge of space marines. The Hellbalde; Strike on the Hearth crested over the banks of the third trench line, crushing hapless ponies beneath its tracks and gunning them down with its sponson hurricane bolter banks.

The Hellblade; a super-heavy tank used exclusively by the Scarred Swords. It was a variant of the Fellblade tank, modified to forgo its demolisher cannon and forward heavy bolters in favour of mounting a Titan-class Inferno cannon into its turret and thicker armour. It was dreamed up by Dranzer in response to the need to rapidly exterminate vast numbers of enemy infantry, a need discover by the Swords during their many confrontations with the Orks over the time of the Great Crusade. Not only did the flames effectively kill the Ork Boyz themselves but also the spores they gave off and used to repopulate their numbers down the line, often allowing them to resurge on worlds where they'd previously been defeated and strike against the often poorly defended local population.

Here, the latter perk was meaningless - but the former was more than useful. Without so much as a warning call the tank's great weapon roared, like a lion asserting its dominance, and spewed an immense torrent of swirling flames over the force of corrupted Equestrians. Those doused directly by the litres of blazing promethium didn't even have time to scream before the inferno consumed them entirely. The flames ran wild from where they started, spreading so rapidly through the Chaos lines that Dragoon had to order his forces back to avoid being caught in the death pyre. The attackers could only run and despair before the wall of death, before it rapidly overtook them - erasing the flesh from their bones and leaving only ash in its wake. Before long the attack force had been routed completely, leaving with only smouldering tatters when compared to their original numbers.

A great cheer erupted from the Imperial Army troops and the loyalist Equestrians, although in the former case it was only a single "HUZZAH!", whereas the latter let out continuous whoops and cries of thanks. The whole ordeal had left Princess Luna dumbfounded and horrified, but also somewhat disappointed.

"Was that... it?" Silent Arrow asked what Luna herself had been thinking, they'd only been here a minute - she and her troops hadn't even gotten into the fighting. It seemed that all they had left to do was enter the city and clean up what remained of their foes.

"No, it was not." Dragoon grunted as he strode towards them. The batter splotches that had stained his armour when they'd left were no longer visible whatsoever. Instead his plate was caked in gore, blood dripped from him like rain, organs and baked flesh chunks stuck to him like confections on a cake and he smelled pungently of blood-metal. Arrow wretched at the sight and even the Princess felt sickened looking at him.

"Bio-scans of the city indicate that vast numbers of foes yet remain, trapped but very much alive." a beige coloured Earth pony relayed as he approached from his towering metal, gun carriage. These mighty rolling fortresses both fascinated and deeply scared Luna, the sheer amount of death that she'd seen them unleash was intoxicating to say the least. The one that spat flames like an Elder Dragon, on the other hoof, made her blood run cold - the ability to erase an entire army in one barrage, all packed up and neatly contained in an armour-plated box the size of a typical Ponyville house. It had already stopped dispensing its holy fury upon the battlefield and yet the great flames continued to spread and rage, consuming the great grassy plains that surrounded Manehatten.

"Thank you for the report, trooper. I assume you are the commanding officer of this force?" the Lunar Princess found herself dragged back from her thoughts by the deep resounding voice of the lead astartes, who was now addressing the beige pony. A quick inspection of the pony from the Equestrian stand point would have suggested that the super-stallion's assumption was incorrect, this pony was far too unadorned with medals and honours to be any form of officer. He wore the same matte-black, plastic-looking armour that all his fellows wore with no additional distinctions other than a gleaming cutlass sheathed at his left flank. So his response was quite surprising to the Equestrian soldiers when he gave it:

"Yes, sir. First Lieutenant Bailey Enart, Tenth Expeditionary Fleet, Second Army Group, First Battalion, Eighteenth Regiment, sir." Enart listed loudly and with a practised speed, punching a hoof to his breastplate as he did so. He was of average height and build for an Earth Pony stallion, simple brown eyes, a few small scares littered his muzzles and forelegs - but, overall, not unattractive by pony standards. "I was placed in command of the force when our dropship crashed and we have been unable to contact Captain Dedtaro since his craft went down inside the city."

"How many dropships made it to this point?" Dragoon asked, his helmeted head cocking to the side slightly.

"Only one, sir... Mine. As I said, the cap's went into the city and we lost one other to an ammo detonation. All the others had to turn away and set down further back, as you know."

"I see..." came the space marine's acknowledgement, turning away to gaze at the wall of flame and smoke that obscured the city from sight. He stared into the roaring brightness thoughtfully, ideas and plans mulling around within his cold fortress of a mind. "Have your troops re-man the trenches that haven't been consumed by the fire, we will use the cover we've been provided with to strategize our next move."

"Sir!" the lieutenant nodded, quickly speaking the same command into his vox link before turning back to face his superior before he spoke again.

"I also wish to meet these 'Loyalist Equestrians' that you spoke of over the vox prior to my force's arrival." the mighty warrior continued, turning back to face the trooper and the Princess. I'm sure Sister Commander Rodrias has already found her way to them and it would be prudent to insure she does nothing regrettable... "I believe the Princess would also like to see to her subjects?"

"I would." she replied curtly, only just hiding the relief she felt that some of Manehatten's citizens had remained loyal to the Crown. Although she knew that they were only a tiny fraction of the mega-city's total population and that caused her to wonder what kind of enemy could cause such a near total uprising against the nation's royalty. Whatever it was clearly demanded fanaticism, considering what little of the battle she'd seen.

"Very well, sir. I was expecting you'd say that." Enart said as he set off, heading further into the Imperial camp, towards the area where screams still resounded with vigour. "They're congregated near the medic camp, those who aren't being seen to are helping the wounded... in one way or another."





It didn't take the group of five astartes, four Imperial Army troopers and eight Equestrians long to reach the makeshift field hospital, but it definitely took them some time to travel through it. It was like a maze, a great puzzle of tents, gazebos, tables and stretchers through which they had to weave and wander. Luna's guards-ponies couldn't help but stare as they passed screaming Imperials with all manner of injuries - some missing legs and wings, others bandaged from head to tail to protect full burns from infection, while others still lay with wounds open to the world desperately being operated on by medics and field chirugeons, chests split open so the healers could access their shredded organs. Then there were the still ones, ponies laying flat and motionless, eyes staring emptily into the far distance.

"Sweet Celestia... this is... this is a massacre..." Silent Arrow whispered as she passed by a corpse that had been cleaved clean in half, entrails laid bare as a chirugeon extracted its healthy organs, for use in transplants - one soldier's loss could be another's salvation after all.

"No." Enart said sombrely from the front of the convoy, eyes fixed dead ahead and jaw set. "This is acceptable."

"How can you say that?! You a freaking robot or something?!" the guards-mare yelled back, taking off and quickly landing in front of the group. She stared the lieutenant straight in the face and snarled. "In what world is hundreds of dead ponies 'acceptable'?!"

"Ours'" the commanding trooper replied flatly, dropping the statement on the mare like a sack of bricks. She visibly flinched at the simpleness of his reply, taking a step back from him. He stepped forward and around her, continuing on his way as if she'd never stopped him. "And hundreds is better than millions." came his ghostly whisper as he passed her by, the astartes and other troopers following behind him with the same assured logic driving their strides.

Luna led the rest of her guards forward and placed a comforting wing on the mare's back.

"You needn't go on if this is too much." she told the whole squad as much as the one batpony. Arrow just stared ahead for a few seconds, stunned and wide eyed, her mind trying to wrap itself around the stallion's statement. He'd given her a horrifying glimpse of his life with nothing but a word and the tone with which he'd said it, for him a hundred soldier's lives was nothing - one hundred ponies who'd never live to see home again and he was fine with that. She'd never lost one of her subordinates in all one hundred and twenty six patrol runs she'd lead into the Everfree Forest and this pony had lost more ponies than she'd ever lead, all in under an hour.

"Silent?" Luna's voice echoed through her ears and mind, bringing her back to the here and now.

"I-... I'm o-okay, Princess... I can go on." she had to, if this foe was gonna take hundreds of ponies to defeat then she'd be damned before she admitted she didn't have the grit to be one of those ponies.

"Are you certain?" a nod from all the Lunar Guards was the answer she received, shaky ones - but nods none the less. "Alright then, let us go and meet our survivors." with that they set off again, quickly falling in behind Enart again as he lead the way through the bloody mess of healing and death.

"Who are these ponies, Princess Luna?" Arrow whispered (far more quietly this time) to her leader as they began to move out of the most densely packed area of the field hospital and towards a selection of four Equestrian carriages near the edges of the Imperial camp. "They treat war like it's just another part of their day. That stallion claimed that his losses were 'acceptable' in the same way I tell my son that dragons aren't birds."

"I know very little about our new... guests, Commander Arrow." Luna replied grimly, her gaze fixed firmly ahead of her, trying not to take in the pain of the wounded around her and the column of thick, black smoke off to their far right. "But one thing I can say for certain is; that they aren't ponies."





Nine minutes had passed since Sergeant Franklin had ordered his few remaining troops to scatter throughout the floor of this office tower which they occupied, in search of anything that could help them in this dire situation. In that time he'd received no reports across the vox regarding a good find and had also failed to locate anything himself, even his own box of prize cigars remained missing. He groaned as he let yet another stall wall drop back to the position he'd picked it up from, having found nothing of particular interest - excepting a few blood spatters and strewn paperwork.

So with only a minute left before they were due to rendezvous at the Baneblade, the veteran sergeant was just about to turn and make his way back to the large clear space where half of their transport had set down, when his attentive equine ears picked up a sound:

A faint, almost completely silent sob. It wasn't much, most would've failed to pick up the sound entirely, but Franklin's half a century of stalking around hollowed out and devastated hab-blocks as a sniper had honed his senses to the finest form an unaugmented could achieve - thus, with a sharp turn to his left, he began to swiftly stride to the approximate location where the sound had originated.

At first glance, the location was completely unremarkable, just another pile of rubble - created by a collapsed structural pillar with an office stall wall leaning against it. However, first glances were often unreliable and a closer inspection revealed a thick pooling of blood, seeping out from beneath the prefabricated panel. With a start he raced forwards, reached under the panel and threw it aside. His efforts were met with a sharp object being thrust directly towards his face, granting him only seconds to throw up his left foreleg and deflect the blow off the arm-guard of his flak-armour. The sharpened wooden stick snapped upon impact, the pointed tip tumbling away as the weapons wielder only watched on in horror as their only defence was broken.

Franklin lowered his hoof again and glared down at his would-be attacker, only to have his glower falter when he saw exactly who had attacked him.

It was a child. A young Earth pony colt, with a deep green coat, a short, flat, dark azure mane and bright teal eyes. He was sitting stunned and rooted between the sergeant and two others - Another youngster, an all pink unicorn filly with shocking scarlet irises and an adult, Earth pony mare, light pink in coat colour accompanied by mane and eye colours matching the colt's. The blood was the mare's, leaking out from beneath the rubble that pinned her to the ground and from a wound in her back from which a large chunk of shattered wood protruded - her hind legs were likely crushed completely by the concrete support as well. The trio stared up at him, faces petrified with fear, unsure of what to do or of his motives. He had many options here, plenty of a less than compassionate nature - but he was better than many of his cold and/or perverted peers.

"Can you hear the voices too?" he asked quietly, following the civilian interaction protocol taught to them at the start of this horrible campaign. They could all hear them, excepting the nulls of the Sisters of Silence, no one on this Purge Crusade was deaf to the temptations of Chaos - but they were all aware of their dark intentions and thus determined to overcome them. As soon as the words registered in the mare's mind she burst into tears, half sobbing, half laughing hollowly as she gazed into the veteran's eyes. The two children turned to her and muttered hushed whimpers of; "Mama?" fixing her with worried looks.

"I-...I..." she began, chocking on her own convulsions, her emotions warring with each other to be the most prevalent in her voice and her expressions. She was dying, that much was clear to the old soldier - of blood loss and massive internal damage most likely. Her breathing was very rapid but heavily laboured, her tongue and lips were very dark red and she was clearly struggling to remain conscious. "T-t-they... won't-t-t... s-shut up." was all she could stutter out before her neck went limp and her head began to drop.

"Mama!" her children screamed and the colt went to catch her, but found himself beaten to it by Franklin.

"Don't worry, their promises and threats are empty." the old soldier said softly, sliding his backpack gently beneath the dying pony's chin and slowly lowered her onto it - sitting himself down on his haunches as he did so. She looked up at him as best she could and offered a grateful smile, a gesture he returned with a nod. It was at that moment that his vox link beeped and Carnalt's voice came in from the other end:

"Sarge? We've all met up at the tank. Maintrom and the Tech Priest have got the thing ready and rearing to go. Just waiting on you. You on your way, sir?" the trooper had removed his helmet, so the speaker had just projected his subordinate's words to the trio of Equestrians as well as him. The youngsters stared at Franklin's head gear as if it had just spawned a fluffy mammal, while the mare only briefly looked to it before training her gaze back to the stallion.

"There are more of you?" she croaked, her voice little more than a gravely whisper now - so quiet it could be drowned out by even the slightest breeze blowing past.

"Yes. The others are gathered at a tan-... at our escape route and just waiting for me." the mare's eyes lit up when he mentioned an escape route, her head rising shakily from her makeshift pillow. She gazed straight into Franklin with those wide, faded teal orbs.

"Then, please... please, take my foals with you." she desperately pleaded, boring into his empty soul with her words and her deep goner's stare. She pushed her protesting progeny towards the sergeant with her waning strength, never once breaking eye contact with him. "They aren't even meant to be here, they're supposed to be with their deadbeat father at his place!" her pleas were becoming increasingly frantic, as she took his silence for a need to be convinced. "PLEASE, I'll give you everything I have, just please take them away from here!"

Franklin watched on impassively as the mother pleaded with him and her children fought against her attempts to push them towards him. Their cries faded into the background as the gears of his mind turned, mulling over everything with a calm mind that only a true veteran of war could muster under such conditions. He smoothly reached over and scooped up his helmet from where he'd set it down, and placed it back on his head. Carnalt had been practically yelling into the vox link since his first transmission had gone unanswered:

"Sergeant Franklin?! Come in! ANSWER ME YA OLD-"

"I hear you corporal, loud and clear." the grizzled soldier replied coolly, the wailing of the family before him also making their way into his response. "I've just got a bit of a situation at the moment is all."

"So those cries... are you?"

"Near me, yeah. If medic Kadnikov isn't too busy, could you send her my way? Approach calmly, the situation is... delicate."

"A-aye aye, sir."

With that the link shut off, and Franklin looked back to the trio. The foals were still kicking and screaming, but the mare had stopped and was simply staring weakly at him again. These children would be orphans soon, or at least one parent down, he could see it. He recognised it. The look of someone who was standing on the brink, on the verge of crossing over into whatever lay beyond. Imperials liked to think it was a cycle of reincarnation, their souls cycled through the Warp and back into the materium to take on a new form. Followers of the Lectitio Divinitatus believed that death lead to a place at the Emperor's immortal side, a heaven of sorts. Franklin couldn't help but wonder what beliefs ponies had about life after death, if any.

He could hear hoof-steps approaching, likely Carnalt and Kadnikov on their way over from the Baneblade. He rose to his hooves and fixed the mare with a blank look. She stared straight back, her eyes still pleading but now remarkably heavy - she had mere moments left.

The two Imperial ponies then rounded a corner of rubble and were staggered by what they saw, a family of ponies in tears and their leader standing stoically over them. Many possible scenarios flashed in their minds' eyes, very few of which placed the veteran in a very good position - but neither of them were able to act on their assumptions. For as soon as they arrived, Franklin scooped up the colt with one leg and practically threw him, kicking and protesting in the most vulgar of ways his young mind knew, to the corporal. Next he pointed to the small unicorn filly and ordered;

"Take the girl and take them to the transport, carry them with your wings if you must." after only a second's hesitation the venerable sniper nodded, tucked the young Earth pony under his left wing and began to advance towards the sister. But she cowered away from him, desperately trying to bury herself into her mother's side.

"NO! NO, NO, NO!" she bawled, staining her mother's coat with her tears and phlegm as she sobbed. "I don't w-w-wanna l-leave you, M-M-Mommy!"

"Ohhhh, my dear Rosy Pearl... it's okay." the mare cooed, using her last dregs of energy she had to nuzzle her daughter lovingly. "Shhhhh, now. It's okay, you're going to be very safe with these ponies. They're going to take care of you and Sapphire Stone, while Mommy rests and goes to visit Granny for a bit..."

"B-b-but Granny's-" the filly began, but was hushed once again by her mother planting a light kiss on the end of her little horn. The mare pulled away and looked in the filly's eyes, smiling her best mother's smile and sounding as calm and loving as she could. It marvelled the Imperials, the strength of a mother - it was a truly great power to have.

"I love you both, with all my heart." she croaked out just loud enough for both siblings to hear over their own blubbering, turning to also give her son one last loving look. "Be good... Now... Go." and with that her eyes closed, head dropped and breathing faded away.

She was gone.

Franklin acted on the filly's shock and disbelief, darting forward and scooping her up. He then passed her on into the waiting wing of Carnalt and bade him and Kadnikov off with a nod. The two adults and two foals quickly left, the colt still protesting furiously while his sister was still caught in a stupor.

Now the sergeant was left alone with the dead mare. He was considering taking his pack back, having remembered that that was where he'd stored his cigars prior to leaving the Excalibur. But in the end he decided against it, turning away and following his subordinates back to the Dragon's Teeth. In time he would come to understand that he had left his pack behind out a profound act of kindness for a person whom he'd only know for five minutes, but for the time being he rationalised his actions as 'an attempt to kick a bad habit'.
> Entry VII: Flight Of The War Machine
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

ENTRY BEGINS. 2nd YEAR OF THE GRAND AGE OF EQUESTRIA





Primarch Furious Storm-Qrow watched the remaining elements of the Scarred Swords' Sixth Company return to the Excalibur to rearm and prepare to join their battle brothers at this 'Manehatten', before returning to the Equestrian command tent and sitting down. He didn't know why, but whenever he heard that name mentioned his gut would cringe horribly, as if someone had just dropped a tortured pun during a funeral service.

Regardless of these personal... issues, Qrow couldn't help but wish that the Tech Priests and Techmarines of his ship could get more Thunderhawks operational as soon as possible. The longer a Chaotic incursion remained in any location, the more powerful it became by orders of magnitude. He would personally see to it that the ruinous powers would never gain such traction on this world, not so long as he stood upon it.

For now, however, he remained with Tenth Company and the Equestrian force in the shadow of one of Humanity's finest warships. With that thought in mind, he came to the simple conclusion that being in its shadow was no where near as safe as being within its dozens of meters of armoured and shielded hull. But will the Equestrians even accept such an offer? Would I?

He remembered the day that his Father, The Emperor Of Mankind, had discovered him. He had been the Hunter King of the Knight's Nobilis Order and their mighty World Fleet, ruler of billions of souls spread across fifteen City-Ships, chiefest and greatest of all their warriors and Admiral of a great fleet of warships. His own flagship had been the Horizon Chaser, a mighty vessel built by the Order from the finest materials to be found on the perfect world of Gaia and the rarest of artefacts, preserved by the group following the end of the Dark Age of Technology and the beginning of the Age of Strife. Nine miles long, with a width of a mile and a beam equal to that - The Horizon was a solid black pitchfork of a vessel, a shape created by its pointed bow and the two great engine housings that sprouted from its rear like fork points. Prioritising function over fashion it possessed very little adornments, unlike many of the other ships of the fleet, both civilian and military. Instead, it was a massed array of macro cannons, lances and missile batteries all contained in a thickly armoured adamantite hide and surrounded by powerful void shields.

To Qrow it was a masterwork of void engineering, unsurpassed by any ship in any respect.

And then The Emperor had arrived. Excalibur dwarfed the Horizon completely and entirely. It's armament was vastly heavier, its armour was both tougher and thicker, possessed quintuple the number of void shields and even had better acceleration than the Nobilis' masterpiece despite its stupendously greater mass. But this was not what had stunned the Lord of Blades, at least not initially. He'd been blown away by its visual grandeur alone, the perfect fusion of practicality and aesthetic adornment. Battlements lined with the gaping maws of dragons, with weaponry protruding from them like tongues of metal. Towering augar spires, topped with golden statues of proud and noble warriors. Prow, resplendent and bladed but also playing host to eight internally mounted Nova Cannons. The vessel's name suited it well, for it was a weapon who's legend was told both by its immense power and its glorious appearance.

Qrow hadn't even needed to meet his father before accepting that he was superior, his ship alone proved it. The primarch even said as much during their first meeting and after a fierce duel between the two that took no less than three days to eventually end, The Emperor had bestowed the ship upon the victorious Hunter King, along with the Second Legion contained within it. Of course more had been exchanged between the two than an introduction and a lengthy combat. But the brief recollection had answered his question; he would.

So, to that end, he wondered if they were just as awed by the mighty vessel as he still was, terrified of its immensity or laughing at its current state. He pondered if their leader would do as he had done all those centuries ago, would she enter this ship peacefully with arms laid low and mind open? In the end, their opinions and wants meant very little to him - he would respect their sovereignty and jurisdiction for now, but he would not be spending any more time away from his home.

With his mind made up he opened his eyes and raised his head to take in the scene before him. Celestia and her entourage sat across from him at the wide, round table over which they had been discussing brief histories and deliberating boundaries, prior to the departure of the Imperial Army and the Sixth Company to Manehatten. 

The group of younger princesses, military leaders and glorified civilians were crowded tightly around the Solar Diarch, all trying to speak at once and all having their own separate conversations. The lead pony herself was silent, eyes fixed in a thousand mile stare, jaw clenching and unclenching continuously, and a distinct wash of heat emanated from her in sweltering waves.

She hadn't reacted to her subjects and 'fellows' once while they had been talking at her in various degrees of panic, their concerns not even eliciting a twitch from her. But when the living mountain of an alicorn sitting across from her moved, so did she. As his head rose, hers rose with it - bringing her own light-magenta eyes to meet his stellar orbs, a sight she still couldn't quite comprehend. The others present noticed the two Demigods rousing and quickly fell silent as they fixed each other with stone faced stares.

"I will be returning to my ship now." Qrow declared evenly, his voice quiet by typical Primarch standards but still more akin to the deep rumble of distant rolling thunder than the voice of a sentient being. The princess said nothing as he donned his helm and rose to his hooves, simply continuing to watch as he returned to his full, towering, quadrupedal height. The words that left his vox speaker next, however, did get a surprised reaction from her and others present at the time; "You and your forces are welcome to join me. In fact, I openly advise that you do, as your safety is more difficult for us to guarantee beyond the Excalibur's protective walls."

The display of reactions he got from the ponies across the table were, suffice to say, mixed. The youngest princess' face lit up like a lascannon at the prospect, her brother's expression went the opposite way, darkening into a defensive and suspicious scowl. The Princess of Love's face cycled through several of the emotional ranges, fear and wariness interwoven with visages of hope an wonder - it was clear she felt how exposed they were out here but she was just cautious of the Imperials as her husband. The other 'Element Bearers', as Qrow had heard them be referred to by the Royals, chattered quietly to each other, some expressing great enthusiasm and others very much not.

But, as ever, the Primarch sidelined all of the aforementioned minor opinions and focused purely on the thoughts and feelings of the leader. Celestia, to her credit, had a remarkable poker face - all her own emotions and ideas hidden beneath a stone-cold mask of indifference. But a fool the Blade Lord was not and he could see the same conflict raging on Cadenza's face was also occurring within her auntie's mind, her eyes twitching from side to side like she was reading from a detailed list of pros and cons held before her. The act of repressing a reaction was a reaction in itself, one that told Qrow he as dealing with an experienced diplomat and leader. After about a minute of silent thought, the large mare sighed and once again met the larger stallion's gaze.

"Do you have sufficient facilities to house my ponies? I'd rather not have them sleeping in corridors and on battlements."

"Princess!" the young Prince Armor exclaimed in a harsh whisper, leaning towards his leader to get into her view. "You can't be serious." Celestia let out another sigh as she turned to give her nephew-in-law a firm look, while she understood and respected Shining's reservations, they couldn't afford them at that time. With Luna out on the battlefront, the rest of them should be in a place of safety - should worse come to worst, she needed to ensure the survival of as many of her family members as possible.

"I know you are not in favour of this, Prince Shining Armor." the young stallion seemed to shrink as his leader and princess addressed him with his full title and name, in the way a child might if their mother were to do the same. "But as it stands, these... 'Imperials' know what it is we're facing and as such are more prepared to deal with it should it attack us. If we are to protect your wife, your sister and your child we must put faith in their experience and, by extension, their defences."

"But..." his argument died in his throat, as his brain found itself unable to formulate one. Everything Celestia had said was correct and he had no intention of allowing any harm to come to his family and friends. If keeping them safe meant giving that responsibility to a group of ponified space monkeys, then so be it.

"The Excalibur has an Imperial Army barrack block free. It sacrifices comfort for capacity, but it should prove adequate." Qrow answered Celestia's question as if her conversation with the other pony hadn't even occurred, receiving a nod from her in return.

"Very well then." she began, rising to her own hooves and replacing her armour plates using her magic - a feat Qrow was still cautiously fascinated by, the very nature of Equestrian magic and its inherent separation from Warp Energies was certainly something that piqued his interests. "The Equestrian Royal Family and our armies accept your offer of refuge, but know that we still have much to discuss before we will consider making you allies of the nation."

"As you wish." the Primarch answered nonchalantly, at this point simple compliance was all he needed of these ponies. He turned and began to make for the tent opening flap, covering the dozen-or-so hoof-steps distance in only four strides and reaching to push the covering aside. "My forces will assemble at the entrance of the Excalibur, ensure all your ponies are behind us - lest they'll be crushed by the boarding ramp."

And with that said, Furious Storm-Qrow stepped out of the Equestrian War Tent and into the baking mid-day sunlight.





When Princess Luna and her personal guards stepped into the battered loyalist Equestrian camp, a great ripple of activity spread through it and all able members of its one hundred and two inhabitants flocked to her in a tide of cheers and overjoyed sobbing. Young foals swarmed around and clung to their hooves, adult mares and stallions practically buried their heads into the ground in desperate attempts to bow lower and what precious few Royal Guards present raised their hooves and proud yet exhausted salutes. The Lunar Guard returned the gesture wholeheartedly, while the Princess herself knelt low to greet and comfort the children crowded below her.

It was an odd spectacle for Dragoon to watch, the way these refugees approached one of their Royals and openly embraced her in such a familiar manner. Astartes were too feared, even by those they stood to protect, to be greeted in such a way and the Primarchs were venerated to such a degree that many were too afraid to even go near them, let alone touch them with their mortal fingers. And yet, here these ponies were weeping into the fur coat of their Moon Princess as if she were a long lost family member they were seeing for the first time.

"A curious culture..." the Lord Captain mused to himself as he watched the display with his own troops, still with blood and flesh chunks dripping off their battle-plate.

"Lord?" Lieutenant Enart called to the lead Astartes, drawing his attention towards him and to another stallion approaching from the rear of the crowd. When he reached them, the Equestrian offered Enart a brief nod before turning to take in the captain's appearance, his tired eyes darting around - scrutinising his weapons, armour and all the gore he was still covered in. Dragoon did the same, eyeing the pale blue horn that sprouted from the pony's head especially. Besides that there was little else that he cared to take notice of, other than the fact that the pony before him looked exceptionally worn out, with large bags under his eyes and a rather slouched posture.

"Equestrian Royal Guard Captain; Dusty Skies." the stallion eventually said, raising his right hoof to the astartes and offering a small smile in greeting. He sounded as exhausted as he looked, his voice coming out as barely more than a gravelly whisper, struggling to be heard over the excited chatter of the other ponies and the distant roar of flames. "When the Lieutenant here said he had support coming, I certainly wasn't expecting... something like you."

The Lieutenant winced slightly at the Equestrian's words, fearfully glancing at the mountain of metal and super-solider as if foreseeing a negative reaction from him. So it was to his surprise when the Space Marine let out a low chuckle in response to the stallions words and took the smaller hoof, carefully, in his own massive forelimb.

"A force of heavily armed, expertly trained super-soldiers? That would hardly be my first expectation either. Especially if it was an Imperial Army man who was telling me." one of Dragoon's warriors laughed heartily, earning a quick bout of bass snickering from his fellows. Enart felt a simultaneous wash of both relief and some mild indignation as the veteran Astartes joked among themselves at his expense - happy that his superiors weren't offended by Skies' comment, but offended himself that the situation's defusal had come from the lack of respect that the Swords had for the Imperial Army.

"Now now, brothers. Our fellows in the Army are not deserving of such ridicule." the Marine Captain growled, the cold edge in his voice cutting into all present to a degree. "They fight equally as hard as we do, their only boundary to success is a biological one, so do not hold their spirit in doubt."

"Aye, Captain!"

"I am Lord Dragoon, Captain of the Scarred Swords' Sixth Company. It is can honour to meet you fellow Dusty Skies."

"Fellow?" the Equestrian questioned, arching an eyebrow and turning to Enart for an explanation.

"It's tradition amongst the warriors of the Knights Nobilis Order. If two or more members of the Order are in conversation and they share the same rank, then they will refer to each other as 'Fellow'. It's a sign of respect and Lord Furious Storm-Qrow brought into his Legion when he took command."

"Oh. Well... thank you, fellow Dragoon." he gave the larger stallion a sincere smile as they released each other's hooves and took a breath to continue their exchange, but their attention was stolen by a sudden cry of panic and terror.

"Hey! HEY! GET OFF ME!" a young unicorn stallion wailed from the back of the crowd, desperately kicking and struggling to get himself out from under whatever was pinning him down. He had been pushed down and immobilised by a mare possessing an almost ghostly white coat, with flowing crimson ponytails and clad in resplendent red-gold armour. Sister-Commander Kerrigan Rodrias stood atop the defenceless pony, one fore-hoof pressed against his head while the other was currently hovering just above his neck. The Equestrians were justifiably quite annoyed by this transgression and some were already moving to attempt to remove the mare. But Dragoon was on the verge of letting out a roar of rage as he very quickly recognised the immense blunder the warrior mare was about to make.

Dusty Skies was just about to trot over to attempt to defuse the situation, but he hadn't even had time to blink before a gigantic flash of emerald had streaked past him. Prowl had read the Sister-Commander's battle reports and had found himself somewhat disgusted by what he'd read. Aside from the mad grin she wore when she fought, she also had the very unfortunate hobby of collecting 'trophies' from her fallen enemies. He had some vague theories about why she would lash out at this pony - she may suspect the stallion was corrupted, or perhaps a daemon spawn in disguise - but he would not let her simply do as she pleased, especially if she wished to take some souvenirs.

In the time it had taken for him to cross half the very short distance separating them she had already raised the hoof that had been over the unicorn's throat, giving it a sharp flick to unleash the gleaming pair of power claws stowed on either side of her foreleg. It was now that the horror of the situation struck the Loyalist ponies, but they could not react nearly quickly enough to stop her. But there was nothing stopping Dragoon, although it was cutting it a bit close - even for him.

He arrived next to the hellish zealot mere milliseconds before her blade would meet flesh. She locked a look of slight surprise and predatory fury on Ozonus, her reactions quick enough to perceive him as a threat and begin to dodge. But a beginning was all it was.

With speed and dexterity not befitting of a being of his physical form, the Sixth Captain lashed out at the senior Sister Of Silence with a lighting back-hoof, catching her directly on the shoulder guard. The force of the strike combined with the Astartes' vastly superior armour completely shattered her pauldron entirely, reducing it to tiny fragments that were sent flying away in multiple directions. Rodrias herself was thrown off her hooves and sent tumbling away like a doll, only stopping when she slammed into a cart around fifty yards away - temporarily becoming lodged in the wooden frame before gravity eventually pulled her free, leaving her to collapse into a heap on the trampled ground.

Time seemed to restart for all others present, with the Equestrians and Imperial Army troopers struggling to comprehend what had just happened and the Astartes struggling to believe what they had just witnessed. Even for them, striking an Officer of The Emperor Himself was unthinkable and could become a court martial offence - that usually depended heavily on the Primarch in charge.

"Are you still with me?" the Captain asked of his men as he returned to all fours, briefly glancing back at the nine members of his command squad. They were at his flanks in seconds, creating a defensive wall between the downed mare and the ponies she was a clear threat to. Consequences be damned, the warriors of the Second Legion would sooner die than leave an ally to stand alone for a good cause. Dragoon eyed the unicorn stallion who'd been attacked for a moment, as he used his magic to pick up a fedora from the earth, before retreating behind the line of Astartes into the hooves of a waiting mare. "There is no taint on him, a subject of the Ruinous Powers would have fought back for itself..." he called to the shifting Sister, his voice tone sharp and clear as his stance - between the ponies and his own 'ally'.

Rodrias audibly growled as she rose to her hooves, glaring spears at the Space Marines. Any mortal creature would have been destroyed spiritually by that scowl, by those frenzied, mismatched eyes. She appeared as furious as Luna had when she'd confronted Dragoon before their departure for this war zone. And just like then, Ozonus Prowl stood as a cold, unshakeable wall against the anger directed towards him - unmoved by the ire of the Pariah standing opposite him.

She took a step forward, eyes still wide and alight with feral intent. As she moved the crowd of ponies behind the Space Marines took a collective step back, gripped in silent terror. Luna and her guards had taken to the air, weapons bared and directed at the beast of a mare before them. The Sister-Commander let out an actual hiss, dropping low and preparing to launch herself at the closest target - Dragoon.

"NO!" but before she could another mare crashed headlong into her side, leaping out from behind the cart that Rodrias had hit. After only a brief wrestle with her leader, Sister-In-Waiting Freida Tolm was able to immobilise the Gold-clad Fury and jab a stimpack full of a deep crimson liquid into her temple. She spasmed only once, her entire body convulsing for a full second - before she went limp.

The world was almost silent after that, neglecting the cries of pain from the medical camp and the roar of the Hellblade's ever present inferno. The leaders of the Imperials and the Equestrians cautiously approached the two Sisters-Of-Silence, encircling and looking down upon them. Tolm didn't look back up at them, still breathing heavily as she continued to hold the syringe against her leader's head.

"Yet another topic to be covered..." Dragoon sighed, the vox speaker in his helm making it sound far more harsh than it was. He gave his neck a stiff *Crack*, before turning away and beginning to walk back towards the field hospital. "Kayne, tend to the Sister-Commander. The rest of you, return to the front and prepare for another attack." his command squad obeyed his orders without question, his ancient Apothecary moving towards the prone mare while the others took off at a gallop back to the trench lines.

"I thought you said this was a topic to be covered?" Luna asked sceptically but not stopping the massive doctor from hoisting the unconscious Null onto his back and carrying her off to the ranks of medics still working fervently to save lives.

"I did and we will. But not here. First, we must prepare for our next step."

"Our next step?" Dusty Skies echoed, cocking his head at the Space Marine, whom was still walking away.

"How we're going to take out that destroyer and save this city."





Jock Maintrom had just about finished familiarising himself with the control systems of the Dragon's Teeth when he heard the entrance hatch to his cramped driving space open with a deep *clunk*. The driver's cockpit was an extremely cramped affair, barely wide enough for him to spread his fore legs and certainly not tall enough for him to stand up in. It was also a very spartan room, possessing little more than the essential control column, accelerator and brakes. Other than that there was only a fuel dial, speedometer and a very basic auspex scanner. And the view port of course.

He had to turn around in his chair to face the hatch as it opened, revealing an especially weathered looking Sergeant Franklin - missing his helmet and las-sniper, and wearing a tired frown on his grizzled muzzle. The younger trooper took a breath to greet his long time superior, but was silenced when the older stallion spoke first and not to him.

"And this brings us to the last stop on our tour and the last but one stop on our meet and greet." to say that Maintrom looked confused would be an understatement more massive than the tank he sat in. His jaw hung loosely on its hinges, his eyes were wide and one of his eyebrows had shot up his forehead like a service lift. All his questions were promptly both answered and replaced when two more heads popped out from around the narrow door frame. A pair of tiny natives, small enough to sit comfortably inside the bore of the Baneblade Cannon, stared wide-eyed at Jock and the 'room' he sat in. Or, at least the slightly less small 'green one' did, the 'pink one' quickly clambered into the chamber and without so much as a word snuggled into the material that covered the young stallion's side. "Jock Maintrom..." Franklin trailed off as he watched the filly make herself comfortable and the colt join her at the driver's other side.

"Warm..." Rosy Pearl sighed as she curled up on the seat and rested her head against Maintrom's side. "Not like *yawn*... the others." and with that, both of the random infants were out like a pair of lights - snoring faintly as they finally relaxed a bit.

"Well... shit..." the Sergeant muttered, stunned by the siblings' reaction to the young trooper. "They've been cowering behind me from all the others all this time, but the moment they clap their tiny eyes on you they just climb in and fall asleep."

"Who the hell are they?!" Maintrom hissed, desperately trying to flail his upper limbs without disturbing the two foals. "And why are they... stifling me?!"

"Beats me, kid." the old soldier shrugged, offering a drained chuckle as he gave the other stallion a pat on the shoulder. "All I know is; they just watched their mother slowly bleed to death, can't stand being around the Loyalty Master or the Tech Priest and apparently like you. Maybe it's your age, the fact that you aren't covered in blood or maybe it's because they think you look like a soft pillow."

"I..." his young subordinate tried to respond, but his words died in his throat as those he'd been told began to sink in. It was no wonder children wanted nothing to do with something like a Loyalty Master or a Tech Priest, both were stone cold and all but heartless. And he supposed it was nice to have some company that wasn't either trying to kill him or trying to get him to kill himself.

"They won't disrupt your ability to drive?" Franklin asked sternly, shifting back into 'command mode' and donning a serious expression.

"No... No, Sir."

"Good. I'll head up to the Command station, take a headcount, then we'll be rolling out."

"Ah, sir?" Maintrom called out before his leader left, making ready to ask the question that had been nagging in his mind since he'd seen the lone war machine. "Where are we going to be driving? I mean... there aren't many places to drive to in this building."

"Good question, Private." came the reply as a wide grin spread across Sergeant Franklin's muzzle. There was a wild glint in his eye as he gave the answer, clearly very excited about it for some reason. "We'll be driving out of that."

Maintrom followed the old trooper's extended hoof, his own, rather dull, eyes tracking around to look out of the driver's view port and straight at... The Hole. His ears flattened against his skull and his jaw dropped like a stone as his mind finally wrapped itself around his leader's crazy-stupid-lunatic plan. He whipped around to begin protesting, but found the space in the entry hatch that Franklin had been occupying was now devoid of him, the veteran seemingly having disappeared entirely. He next considered not going through with the nincompoop scheme, but the presence of a Loyalty Master aboard the vehicle made that option literal suicide - at least with the Sergeant's plan he had a chance of surviving, Baneblades could survive multistory drops, right?

"Hey." a little voice piped up from Maitrom's side, pulling his attention to the sea-green Earth-Pony colt sitting there and looking up at him almost indignantly. Jock simply stared at the little male, arching an eyebrow at him as he simply stared straight back.

"What?"

"Whaddo' those thingies on the floor do?" the small pony demanded, pointing at the brake and accelerator pedals with a forelimb. He was going to scoff in response, what self respecting Imperial didn't know an accelerator peddle when they saw one, but quickly remembered that this child was no Imperial and that the Equestrians had no self powered land vehicles. He also doubted calling them the 'brake' and 'accelerator' respectively would mean much to the juvenile equine.

"That's the go pedal." he sighed and pointed to said object, sure that the Tech Priest was going to be as close as he could to mortified at what he'd just called the holy instrument of the Omnissiah. "And that's the stopper."

"What's that for?" the little pink ball of fluff on his other side suddenly piped up, causing him to nearly jump clean out of his fur as he could have sworn that she'd fallen asleep. She was pointing at the control column, a pair of articulated handles affixed to a fully extended rod that protruded from the dashboard. When the handles were pushed forward and gas was applied, power was sent to the tracks - with each handle controlling the tracks of their side, left handle for left tracks and right handle for the right tracks. However, this would all be a bit beyond the two tiny ponies enclosing him on either side, so, once again, he found himself simplifying its function to a ludicrous degree.

"Steering stick." the little ponies looked like they were about to ask more questions, their wide eyes scanning all over the cramped space looking for more things to ask about - but they were thankfully silenced by Franklin's voice echoing out from the vox speaker on the control board.

"Attention crew, this is Franklin. All stations sound off." his voice, already gruff and gravelly enough, came out a bit garbled over the internal comms, but the foals still recognised it and crowded around the little mesh device with awe.

"Mister Franklin?" the filly asked the box, staring into it disbelievingly as she and her brother tried to comprehend the strange device. "How did you get stuck in this little net?"

"Hey, now. Get down from there!" Maintrom almost whined, awkwardly trying to sit up in his permanently reclined seat and pick the two off his console. He was unsuccessful in this, but the two complied with his request in a strangely compliant manner - he was half expecting a tantrum or a 'fight' over it, but there was none. They returned to his sides and even sat human style when he bade them to, to make applying the 'cross-shaped' seat belt a bit easier.

"Well, I guess that counts as Jock's sound off." the sergeant chuckled over the vox, before he returned to seriousness again and ordered the others to sound off as well.

"Main Turret gunner, Carnalt here."

"Loyalty Master Falorum, Main Turret loader."

"Demolisher gunner, Luccous, alive and ready to shoot some shit."

"Demolisher loader, trooper Xerxes here."

"Tech Priest and tertiary gunner, designation E - 0213, present."

"Medic Kadnikov, here with Thorn and acting tertiary loader."

"Then that's everyone accounted for." Franklin rounded off, taking a few seconds to pause and let anyone disagree - but also to psyche himself up a bit for what he was about to say. "Very well, everyone strap in and hold onto something. Maintrom?"

"Y-yes, sir?" his gut was twisted and knotted as he waited for the order, a few beads of sweat trickling down his forehead as he took a tentative hold of the control column in his fetlocks and placed his hind hooves on the floor pedals.

"Let's take off." came the order, spoken so softly one would imagine the old stallion was having second thoughts.

"Aye aye sir!" and with that, Jock Maintrom kicked the accelerator down and pressed both handles forward. With a mighty roar that shook the shattered husk of a building, the Dragon's Teeth lurched and began to rumble away. It crushed all manner of corpses, broken equipment and office supplies beneath its solid metal treads - exhaust billowing from its rear as the tank's fusion powered heart kicked into life.

"Uhhhh, Maintrom. Y-you're heading straight for the big hole there, buddy." Xerxes laughed nervously over the vox as the Baneblade reached its modified top speed of fifty seven kph, thundering towards the sheer drop with none of the fear of its organic passengers.

"That's the plan!" the younger trooper yelled in reply, pushing as hard as he could on the gas pedal - as if they'd suddenly entered another reality where more speed meant more safe.

"ARE YOU INSANE?" Luccous screamed, clearly as close as physically possible to her vox mic.

"BLAME THE SERGEANT IN HELL!" Manitrom bellowed over the sounds of the roaring tank. They were mere yards from their 'exit' now, seconds from plunging into an unknown abyss.

Franklin was oblivious to the desperate wails of his subordinates, deaf to their complaints about his idea. He was too busy gazing out of a viewing cupola on the vehicle's left side, watching the devastated office block go by. He strained his eyes too their physical limit, glaring into the rubble as he sought out a particular sight. 

There! Just over a pile of Devourer armour scraps, was a fallen pillar. Under that pillar was a pony. Light pink in colour, with a deep azure mane. She lay still and even from this distance, he could see the tiny, content smile on her face. With a deep breath he sat up straight and pounded a hoof over his heart, as he muttered a solemn vow.

"You have entrusted your foals' lives to us, left them in our hooves believing they'd be safe. I'll be damned thrice by The Emperor Himself before I let that faith go in vain. On His name, I swear that to you now."

By the time he had finished making his promise, she'd disappeared from view and the ground was no longer beneath the Dragon's Teeth's tracks. For a brief moment they flew free from the building, bathing Franklin in the dazzling light of Equis' star through the cupolas. It was almost as if The Emperor was baring witness to his oath, silently condemning to swift justice should he fail to keep it.

Then the moment passed.

And the Dragons Teeth, Baneblade Super-heavy tank, plunged downward - towards a seething throng of corrupt ponies below.
> Entry VIII: Blood Over the Smoke
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

ENTRY BEGINS. 2nd YEAR OF THE GRAND AGE OF EQUESTRIA





Jock Maintrom was deafened. More than that, his every sense was drowned out by the cacophony pressing down on him from all sides. The hellish roar of the Dragon's Teeth's power plant, the thunderous rattling of the tank's metal bones and the screams were placing such a block on his senses that he could barely tell what was happening at all. He was vaguely aware of some pressure on his sides, the insignificant shaking of something held in his fetlocks, a slight burning sensation in the back of his throat. It was all nothing when compared to the crushing weight of the noise. 

Who was even screaming? He was so detached from his own body in that moment that it could well have been him and he never would have known. However, none of this was trauma unparalleled to him. He'd been in situations like this before, where sound and crushing G-forces drowned all his senses in a horrific, cacophonous miasma. This moment was eerily similar to the feelings generated by a trans-orbital shuttle flight, the unbearable pressure on his ears, the vibrations that threatened to shake his organs free of his body and the desperate want to be just about anywhere else - it all lined up perfectly.

Maintrom pushed desperately through the marsh that currently was his own mind, searching for the words of wisdom his grandmother had given him when he'd left his home on the city ship Returner for a life in the Imperial Army. The retired veteran's harsh rasp of a voice was easily found in his memory, so cemented there by her constant nagging that he would never forget it, no matter how hard he may try.

"Don't get so caught up in the moment that you forget to look where you're going, lad."

He clung to those words, using their wisdom to cut a sense of clarity into his addled thoughts. He forced his eyes open, wrenching them even a sliver taking as much effort as it would take to lift one of the tank's massive Demolisher shells with his bare-hooves. But it was enough, he could see what they were rapidly approaching and he knew what to do in response - pushing his forehooves forward and depressing his hind hoof on the accelerator.

Even at the best of times, a Baneblade was ultimately a graceless machine. Big, blocky and favouring sheer brute force over precision strikes, they were the war hammer of the Imperium's armoured vehicle arsenal. They did their remarkably simple job splendidly well, able to break through some of the toughest emplacements ever erected by the enemies of man - given sufficient time and resources.

However, flight wasn't included in the Baneblade's list of strengths - in fact, long drops were one of the tank line's few natural enemies, able to turn its immense mass into a costly weakness. Dragon's Teeth, despite the long list of modifications made to it by Captain Basarian over the years, was no different from any of its millions of kin spread across Humanity's empire in this regard. It's turret skirts would offer it no protection from the hard concrete below, it's extra sponson plating would do little to help the crew as they were crushed into paste by the forces created by landing.

But, what did save both the tank and its hopelessly squishy crew was it's supercharged engine block. The gigantic power plant in its rear had been modified and experimented with beyond reason by the more ambitious Mechanicum Adepts of Fabricator General Talboran's sect. The result of these alterations was a fifty seven kilometres-per-hour top speed, improved fuel economy and vastly improved acceleration.

So, whereas any typical Baneblade would have barely reached top speed before reaching the gash in the building, the Dragon's Teeth's enhanced acceleration gave it several full seconds of careening forwards at full tilt before taking flight. This additional momentum carried it far further through the air, bridging the gap between the building they had crashed in and its neighbour. Sergeant Franklin's crazy, nincompoop plan was actually working.

The panes of glass windows, and the concrete pillars that surrounded them, put up very little resistance as over three hundred metric tonnes of tank slammed into them - shattering into tiny fragments as the modified Baneblade came thundering down upon them. The same could be said for the floor of the forty fifth level of the Hoofield-&-Marecoy HQ building, simply giving out under the vehicle's immense bulk - and for the forty forth floor, and the forty third. It was almost as if the building wasn't there at all as the Dragon's Teeth continued to plummet with only minimal deceleration occurring as they passed through each floor.

But it was accumulating. Maintrom could feel the forces on his body decreasing, or in the very least changing form. No longer was the pressure on him a continuous, crushing feeling - instead it had become sudden painful jolts, that rattled the teeth in his gums, interspersed with very short  periods of weightlessness. He could feel his organs being tossed around in his chest cavity, first being lifted gently upwards, before being harshly thrown straight back downwards again. He was sure that he would have puked, if his stomach hadn't already emptied itself of its contents of partly digested dry crackers, vitamin cubes and recycled water during the crash landing of the Devourer less than half an hour ago.

Then, all of a sudden, the bone shaking crashing stopped and the crew of the Dragon's Teeth were caught in a weightless period for several seconds. They had breached into the building's magnificently designed and splendidly tall main lobby and were careening down through it towards the ground at tremendous speeds. But, those speeds had been lessened, not only by the floors they had been crashing through, but also through conversion into forward momentum created by Maintrom's inputs with the accelerator and controls, enough so that when they finally made it to the ground they weren't instantly flattened into a bloody paste by the impact.

However, it was still by no means a soft landing. Only Jock's harness prevented both him and the two foals at his sides from having their heads catapulted into the dash board at velocities that would have most certainly shattered their skulls. After that titanic crash of steel tracks on marble floor, the tank continued to move. It did not bounce, it was far too heavy to ever regain air again, instead it began to skid - tracks scraping furiously on the smooth ground trying to get purchase. 

Maintrom knew what to do, while keeping his hind-hoof planted firmly on the accelerator, he wrenched back on the left handle on the control column. With a mighty *CLUNK* the gears in the left tracks changed and the meters of chain-linked metal plates began to spin in reverse - producing just enough friction to turn the far-too-fast skid into a ponderous swerve. Forcing the left column back forward again, but keeping the right one more depressed, he had the multi-hundred tonne tank doing donuts around the lobby - gradually reducing the power and bringing the tank finally to a hard stop against a nearby pillar.

But it was with that last, violent lurch that the forces being exerted on the makeshift crew of the Dragon's Teeth finally settled and faded entirely, leaving the group of mortal ponies to groan and gripe in peace. When his vision eventually stopped its wobbly spinning Maintrom was able to force his trembling hooves to remove themselves from the control columns, un-clipping the safety harness and allowing his body to relax into his seat with an exhausted sigh.

"If we were meant to fly, the gods would have made us all pegasi." the young Equestrian male uttered breathlessly, his tennis ball sized eyes still wedged open by terror. His comment elicited a ragged chuckle from the trooper he was still clinging to, little more than a few coughs forced out from lips baring a haggard ghost of a smile.

"If you spend your whole life waiting for the help of the gods, you will never gain anything." Maintrom replied, wiping great droplets of cold sweat from his forehead with the back of his foreleg. "Besides, the gods that are listening... you don't want their help anyway..."





"The enemy have lined their side of the banks with heavy weapons emplacements, lascannons, auto cannons, heavy bolters... even a coupla Earth-Shakers dotted around the place." Lieutenant Enart gave the grim report on the enemy forces while leaning over a wide holo-map, hastily set up inside a prefab windowless bunker that was set into the rear most trench line. It illuminated the confined space with an image of the bridge, the Imperial dug out and the section of the Chaotic defensive line that protected the bridge - although this was only on account of the table's small size, rather than an actual lack of data.

With him standing around the device were; Captain Dragoon, Princess Luna, Guard-Captain Skies, Lunar-Captain Silent Arrow and Sister in Waiting Freida Tolm. They stood in silence, attentive to his words, but the eyes of three of the room's occupants were fixed firmly on one of the others.

The young Sister seemed to wilt under the harsh gazes of the three Equestrians, the answer to the question she knew they were dying to ask plaguing her mind almost as much as the pain from the shallow cut across her brow. Her superior had almost done the unthinkable and she'd been willing to go through Tolm to do it - it was a scary prospect, especially for the young Imperial who had seen the Sister-Commander work and knew exactly what she was capable of.

Although Lady Rodrias wasn't the focus of her thoughts right now, these three ponies and the Sixth Captain were. The latter especially, not only because he had struck a high ranking member of one of The Emperor's most elite forces, but also because he was seemingly unfazed by it. He had not raised word of it since the event had occurred over fifteen minutes ago and as a result, neither had anyone else.

"The entire shore of the island is protected in this way, although we believe that a vast majority of their 'swarm' forces are located near the bridge here." Enart rounded off, plopping down onto his haunches as he did so and rubbing his aching neck with a spare hoof. He hadn't slept in days and he was really starting to feel the weight of days worth of near non-stop combat resting on his bones - or maybe it was just the fact that he, as an equine, had just spent ten minutes sitting upright in a tank's turret firing a stubber on full auto. I can't afford to get lazy now... I'll just have to rest when I'm dead.

"Anything else worthy of mention, Lieutenant?" Dragoon pressed, not wanting anything left out or otherwise under noticed. This battle was no different from some of the earlier sieges of the Purge Campaign, for him at least. It was simply another combat on soil he never expected to have to fight on, against a foe he could have never predicted. Although it said a lot about the Imperium's hubris, that a primarch's betrayal was considered just as impossible as fighting a race of technicoloured sapient equines.

"No, sir."

"Very good." the Astartes captain nodded in satisfaction, at least they knew what types of gun barrels they were going to be throwing themselves at. Neither his demeanour nor his posture changed as he calmly shifted his attention to the next thing on his list of priorities. He turned his head slowly, but with pointed purpose, so when it finally stopped he was staring straight at the young Sister of Silence - the harsh glare of his solid red eye lenses boring into her. For a time, he said nothing - simply continuing to melt the barely adult Sister under his unreadable gaze.

"Libidine Sanguinem Necro-psychosis." the words he did eventually speak were done so casually and with little flair, as if he were ordering a meal at a restaurant. Although they sounded to the Equestrians like nothing more than the mutterings of a mad pony and even though they sounded like actual language to Enart - their exact meaning was utterly lost on the under-hiver. But, to Tolm it was as if he had just plucked the secret she had been keeping straight from the confines of her skull with as much effort as it would take for a Dreadnought to remove a carrot from the ground.

"H-How?" Tolm stuttered, eyes wide as dinner plates and jaw working dumbly as she attempted to force out more words. She eventually succeeded and threw her hooves onto the holo-table before her, forcing herself closer to the captain as if she thought he was having trouble hearing her. "Lady Rodrias' ailment is a classified secret of the Sister's of Silence! Only a select few of the Upper Order and her closest Sisters know it!"

"On paper, we Astartes have precious little free time. Never more than an hour per Standard Terran Cycle, and that's only during transit periods." Dragoon began, removing his stare from the frantic Sister and placing it back onto the flickering image displayed before him - its purpose, to press on Tolm's already fragile mental state, complete. "However, we spend a great deal of time in transit, young one. Days, even weeks, at a time. Even an hour adds up to a lot over such repetitive periods."

"I know you master's ailment, because I recognise the symptoms from the disease's entry in many Medicae Journals, all of which I read during my free periods, and from conversations with many Apothecaries. I am also aware, after extensive research and data mining, that Sister Commander Rodrias originates from the planet Empolias - where LSNP patient zero was found."

Silence descended briefly upon the bunker, as all present soaked up what information their brains could - the Equestrians understanding very little due to an overall lack of knowledge of the Imperium's list of medical problems. Enart fared a bit better, although the disease's name meant little to him, he was well aware that if a Space Marine made note of an illness, it had to be pretty freaking serious.

Tolm was completely stunned by the revelation that the Marine Captain had just opened her eyes to, but also left feeling profoundly stupid as well. Of course the Adeptus Astartes knew of the existence of her CO's ailment, they were the most travelled, most aware and most medically superior force humanity had besides the Emperor Himself and his Primarch sons. If anyone had such information at their disposal, despite the censoring of all information regarding LSNP, it was the super-soldiers who occasionally had to fight it. 

"Ahem." Princess Luna cleared her throat, feeling that it was finally her time to speak up and get some thing straightened out. "I feel pressed to remind you, Captain Dragoon, that we have near to no knowledge of your world's... issues. So, as respectfully as I can manage, I demand to know exactly why that... Beast attempted to kill one of my loyal subjects." her tone was sharp and harsh, every emphasis she made on certain words caused all the mortals present to flinch drastically. Dragoon was as unfazed by her actions as ever, a fact which irritated the Princess to no end, choosing to shrug nonchalantly before talking again.

"Libidine Sanguinem Necro-psychosis is a recurring physical disease, not a mental one - so it is not treatable in the long term with medication or mental conditioning. It is the result of a permanent genetic defect found in most inhabitants of Empolias, that causes portions of the brain, that are linked to greater reasoning and several key emotional controls, to degrade and eventually die. It can be treated temporarily with genetic suppressants, to stop further degradation, and cell replicators, to repair some of the damage - but the life spans of those diagnosed with it are often short and painful regardless of whether it is treated or not."

"What are the symptoms?" Enart asked quickly, pushing the words out of a dry mouth - the description of the disease creating a hollow well in the pit of his stomach. "Besides the ones that Sister-Commander Rodrias has already made obvious."

"Hallucinations, feelings of continuous hunger, emotional detachment, to name some of the less notable ones." Dragoon began, his voice never losing its somewhat disinterested lilt. He did not continue himself, however, and instead of which he turned his head back to face Tolm again - every set of eyes in the room followed his gaze as it rested upon the young Imperial.

"The worst symptoms include; madness, intense simultaneous migraines and... insatiable blood lust." she grew increasingly quiet as she made her way through the sentence, the last few words coming out as a barely audible whisper and she shrank in on herself at the same pace, retreating back off the holo-table and back onto her haunches. She still has some ways to go before she makes full Sisterhood the Sixth Captain mused to himself, her mind still far from the steel cage it would need to become if she were to continue down this path.

"And she is allowed to lead under such circumstances?!" Luna cried, aghast at such a prospect - how could anyone with such a volatile illness be allowed to command troops, that she could turn on at any conceivable moment. What sort of world did these 'Imperials' come from, where the criminally psychopathic were allowed to lead armies and millions dead was just another day on the battlefront.

"Lady Rodrias is a fine warrior and great leader!" Tolm yelled across the table, the complete one-eighty of her typical demeanour causing even the typically stoic and reaction-less Dragoon to blanch slightly. She was reared up onto the holo-table again, teeth clenched and a fearsome fire of devotion burning in her glare. "She may be unwell, but she is wholly devoted to the Imperial Truth and she is more than capable of spreading The Emperor's word, even with her condition!"

"She is a MONSTER!" Luna roared back, pushing Silent Arrow, who had put herself between the Princess and the young sister when the latter had arisen to defend her leader's honour, aside and throwing her fore-hooves onto the table to bellow down at the smaller mare. "SHE POSES A CONSTANT THREAT TO THOSE AROUND HER AND SO LONG AS THOSE AROUND HER INCLUDE MY SUBJECTS, I WILL NOT STAND FOR HER PRESENCE!"

Tolm was about to shout back a retort, but she was cut off by the blaring howls of warning klaxons and a voice yelling over all vox channels;

"AIR RAID!"





The world beyond the command bunker had erupted into a frantic, hellish fire fight - corrupted pegasi rained from the sky in a hateful and bloody torrent. The Leman Russ Tanks' pintle mounted weapons spat their metal fury right back, the gunners forcing their weapons to the maximum elevation possible to try and intercept the flyers before they reached the ground.

The landing force's trio of Hydra Flak Tanks had just opened up when Princess Luna emerged from the ferrocrete bunker, their batteries of powerful autocannons forcing out a continuous staccato of tracer-marked death into the skies above. She watched in awe as the munitions they fired detonated in mid flight, sending brutal flurries of metal shards tearing through anything in their path. 

But even with the barrage of the Hydras, Leman Russes and the weapons teams shredding pegasi left, right and centre - the attack did not relent. An endless tide of airborne ponies poured over the top of the thick, black smoke still being produced by the roaring flames below. With shrieking cries of fury, pain and pleasure they descended upon the Imperial base - some with fangs bared, others with horrifically grown claws outstretched, others still baring whips formed of their own entrails.

Imperial Army troopers dashed about frantically all around the Princess of the Night, desperately adorning spiked battle-plate or clambering into the relative safety of tanks and bunkers. Astartes charged about with far greater purpose, moving to the defence of the wounded in the medicae camp or closing on the static AA teams to protect them from ground attack - firing off bursts from their wrist mounted Bolters as they went.

The first few corrupt Equestrians to make ground fall were nothing but broken stragglers, landing hard with broken limbs and gaping bullet wounds - some simply pasted themselves on the hard dirt and tank armour below them, unable to control their descent after having their wings sheared off by passing shrapnel or blown off entirely, along with chunks of their sides, by bolt rounds.

But as the core of the swarm arrived, more of the mutated horrors began to make it to ground intact or well enough to start laying into the frantic defenders. It was here that Luna would get her first taste of battle with the Forces of Chaos, and she was far from happy with its flavour.

A screaming pegasus stallion came diving straight for her, his right forelimb raised and ready to impale her with a rusted brass spike that grew from his very bones, breaching his flesh from within and dripping with crimson ichor. But he was too slow, a mere mortal challenging a Celestial God.

Luna caught the howling pony in her magic and took a few seconds to take in his features. She could no longer tell his coat or mane colour, most of both having been stripped away along with the surface layer of skin below. What little hair he had left was drenched with blood, soaked into the very fibres of his coat and dripping from every available orifice. He was crying blood, bleeding smoke and jabbering a frenzied mantra at throat shredding volumes.

"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!!" he garbled through a lung-full of his own life fluids, seemingly unfazed by its loss and the pulsing fissures in his skin. He swung his ice pick of a limb at his old ruler over and over again, desperately trying to drive it into her eye socket and stab the brain that lay behind those cold, hard orbs.

The youngest Celestial Sister only sighed, feeling an immense swell of pity for the creature that she held in her telekinetic grasp. "What a waste of a life." she spat, cursing the beings that had reduced one of her fine subjects to such a monstrous state. With a thought, she crushed his heart in his chest, causing his entire body to convulse and spasm, it's muscles locking up from the pain. Luna relaxed her grip and was about to let the dead stallion fall to the ground, when a burst of motion erupted from the would-be corpse.

The supposedly dead pony let out a scream that curdled the blood of everyone who heard it, a demented howl that would sound out of place coming from anything beyond a nightmare, and lashed out with its brass spike once again. It was such a shock to Luna, that a being with a crushed heart could move at all let alone attack with such speed, that she was unable to re-tighten her hold on him and he was much too close for her to raise a shield in time.

The possessed pony was mere millimetres from gouging her eye out when Freida Tolm threw herself at the levitating corpse, ripping it free of the Princess' grip, and driving her wrist blades into both the extended limb and the side of the already dead stallion's skull.

Tolm's momentum then carried the two out of Luna's field of vision, but she could afford no time to track their progress as she and her Lunar Guard were set upon by further scores of furiously screaming heretics. For the first time in her life the Princess of the Night was unable to take the time out in combat to check on the well-being of her guards, such was the sheer volume of bodies throwing themselves at her. All she could do was react to each problem as it arrived, hacking down a mare with her hoof-claws on her right, decimating a stallion with a magic blast on the left, buck kicking a flayed body of indeterminate gender behind her.

It was total carnage, beyond anything she had ever encountered before. Where, once upon a time, she would have taken a moment to reflect on every bone she broke, on every limb split and on every life taken - now she did not have the time. It was one kill, straight into the next. A terrible, bloody dance.

However, she quickly grew tired of the brutal rhythm. With a scream of fury she unleashed a short range, three-sixty-degree blast of force that granted her just enough time to charge up a beam of seething magical power - raking it across all those who attempted to dive on her from above for a good few seconds. With the surrounding airspace temporarily cleared, she threw up a wide dome shield and was finally able to turn around and check on her subordinates - what she saw horrified her.

Four of them were dead. Leather Wing lay on the ground not far from Luna herself, bisected by the crab-like pincer of a mutated pony that lay dead only foot or so away, with a gaping hole where its upper skull used to be. Solid Stone was impaled through the chest and nailed against the wall of the nearby command bunker by an imposingly large spear, made entirely of bone, his killer nowhere to be seen. Dread Beat was missing a foreleg and her entire barrel had been split open, revealing her innards to the unforgiving world. All that was left of Ground Pounder was his helmet, a large, blooded crack in the section that typically resided over the left eye.

The twins, Iron and Bronze Plate, still stood - side by side and facing opposite directions, guarding each other's rears. Iron was limping, resting against his sister for support, and was bleeding from a gash in his cheek. Bronze was missing an ear and her helmet was a dented, tattered mess on the ground at her hooves. Both were still engaged with some beaten stragglers from the attack, but were otherwise in the clear.

Silent Arrow, on the other hoof, was still very much fighting for her life - pinned to the ground and struggling with a six-legged, hairless, pink skinned horror of a pony that was attempting to devour her entire face with its over-fanged maw. Luna was about to deal with the beast herself, charging up another blast to remove the creature from her friend and bodyguard, when Lieutenant Enart came charging in - throwing himself headlong at the horror's side and knocking it clean off the Lunar Guard Captain. 

The two tussled on the ground for a brief moment, before the Imperial was able to right himself atop his screeching opponent, draw his combat knife with a fetlock and with a single, swift movement he drove the blade into the roof of the creature's mouth. It continued to struggle and scream even as it neared death, clawing at Enart's flak armour with grotesquely bent and misshapen fingers - but it was fruitless. With a sharp twist of his hoof and, by extension, the knife the Lieutenant ended the creature's life then and there.

Once he was sure the beast was truly deceased, he wrenched his knife free of its maw and slid it back into its holster. Rising to his hooves, he used the reprieve that the Equestrian Princess had granted them to take note of the situation. The fierce knife fight between the Imperials and the Corrupted Equestrians was still raging all around them, but it was as if they weren't actually there - ponies threw themselves at the barrier, but could not get through. Bolters and cannons fired, but he could not hear them nor feel their thunderous repeats rumbling through his lungs. The inside of this bubble was so cut off from the outside world, they might as well have been watching this scene through a display back on the Excalibur.

"Silent, are you alright?" Luna trotted quickly up to her chief guard and helped her to right herself. The Lunar-Captain was littered with shallow scrapes, rendered onto her by the mutant's malformed fingernails - but other than that she appeared fine. She insisted as much, claiming that she was just winded and a bit sore. This, however, was nowhere near enough to prevent her Princess from performing a full medical scan of her body, checking for even the slightest hint of something being wrong. Only when she was absolutely certain that her friend's life wasn't about to end at the hands of some terrible infection or a Warp-borne curse, she slowly released the smaller pony from her magical hold.

This was a stroke of luck, for her concentration at the moment directly following the one where she set Silent Arrow back down, was broken by a brief and high pitched whine in her left ear - before being superseded by the deep, rumbling voice of Captain Dragoon.

"To all those who can hear my voice, this is Lord Captain Dragoon of the Sixth Company of the Scarred Swords legion." he spoke clearly and with no signs of fatigue what-so-ever, but his message was delivered with great urgency. Luna could hardly believe the clarity with which his voice was spoken into her ear, it was as if he was standing right next to her in the middle of a calm, grassy field in the middle of Spring - rather than in the midst of an incredibly heated conflict against demented, shrieking foes.

"I have formulated a plan; to breach the enemy defences around the city and to eliminate the Destroyer Arc Phantom. I will lead two squads of my legion in a Thunderhawk strike against the enemy ship, we will breach through the hull, dispose of its crew and take command of the ship. From there, we will shut down the vessel's Warp Core before activating the scuttling charges in its fusion reactors."

"The second and concurrent phase of the plan will be lead by Sergeant Tiades of Third Squad, with the support of Ancient Brother Margam. They will spearhead an assault through the wall of fire, with the support of the Imperial Army Armoured divisions. While these assault actions are taking place, the Army Infantry will escort the wounded and Equestrian loyalists to the Devourer and await reinforcement from the rear."

"I know this plan may be considered suicidal by some of you, but in times like these - when 'holding the line' is no longer possible, your only two remaining options are; 'DEATH OR GLORY'!!!" with the outburst of those three words, Princess Luna perceived a stark change in the movements of the Imperials around her. In the space of a second, their entire battle posture turned a full one-eighty - launching straight from a staggering and weakened defence, into an unstoppable counter attack.

Groups of IA troopers, clad in spiked battle-plate, formed up around the static weapons positions and charged straight into heretical ponies around them. The Space Marines also regrouped their squads, clustering up before driving themselves into the largest formations of babbling pegasi.

The tides had been utterly turned on the Chaotic attackers - no longer were they assaulting an off-guard and weary enemy camp, now they were an overextended regiment grounded and cut-off in the middle of a horde of furious Imperials. Nonetheless, they still threw themselves at the loyalists who surrounded them on all sides - breaking their bodies on hulking ceremite-clad warriors or being buried beneath the relentless tides of the Imperial Army.

"DEATH OR GLORY!" Enart roared as he reared up on his hind legs, kicking out with his forelegs as he did so - a phantom feeling of happiness filling him as he did so, as if he had just undertaken some right of passage that all ponies were entitled to. He then threw himself forward, making a bee-line for the portion of Luna's shield where some Traitor Equestrians still pounded uselessly against it.

The Princess opened a gap in her shield bubble mere moments before the frenzied Lieutenant crashed into it, the dome of blue energy splitting open and allowing the last dregs of their attackers tumble in. Enart didn't even stop to kill them all, simply sprinting straight through them as if they weren't even there - shattering one's skull with his helmet without even a second's pause for thought.

Those who hadn't been killed by the Imperial's zealous charge were finished off by Iron Plate, Bronze Plate and Luna herself - with effective but slightly sorrowful ease. Silent couldn't help but let out a low whistle, from her place leaning against her leader's side, as she watched Enart continue his sprint through the enemy, on an unyielding path towards his Leman Russ - the Hell Raiser.

"He may be... messed up, for thinking that millions of dead ponies is acceptable." she muttered, wincing as talking agitated several of the shallow scratches on her muzzle. "But he sure as Tartarus isn't a coward."

Luna only nodded silently in response, finding herself rendered speechless by the sheer carnage unfolding all around her. She could by no means fault the Imperials on the grounds of bravery, if even a normal (if not very fit and well trained) Earth Pony like Enart could square off against pegasi that breathed cold, pink flames and not back down. But there was still something off about them that deeply unsettled her. Maybe it was their practised and brutal approach to war, maybe it was the mind set that they all shared - that any losses were acceptable, so long as strategic victory was achieved in the end. Whatever it was, it was irrelevant at the current moment.

In the here and now, they had a battle to win.

"Silent, Bronze, Iron stay close to me." Luna ordered her three remaining Guards, her voice returning strong and authoritative - any doubt about what had to be done to succeed abolished, for the sake of Greater Equestria. "We follow the Lieutenant, to his 'steel elephant'. Move out!"

With that order given, the Royal Alicorn and her entourage set off after Enart - following in the wake of his thunderous cries of:

"FOR THE EMPEROR!!!"
> Entry IX: To The Skies Brothers
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

ENTRY BEGINS. 2nd YEAR OF THE GRAND AGE OF EQUESTRIA





Lieutenant Bailey Enart scrambled frantically up the hull of his command tank with a sense of driven urgency unlike any other he had experienced before. He had been fighting alongside the Scarred Swords since he was sixteen, little more than a naive, bright-faced brat with delusions of grandeur and glory. In all that time, he had not once heard one of them make such a speech as the one that Sixth Captain Dragoon had given to the beleaguered Manehatten Liberators, as the Loyalist; Imperial Army, Astartes and Equestrian forces had become collectively and colloquially known.

Suffice to say he could see why the Swords fought as valiantly as they always did, if they had speeches like that pumped into their ears whenever a battle started. The Astartes around him had fully rallied to their leader's call, sweeping across the fire-base like a relentless tidal wave - cutting down, smashing apart and tearing through any and all corrupted pegasi in their path. His own Imperial Army troopers were significantly less deadly, but were still doing him proud as they covered the retreating wounded and medicae staff. 

Engines were starting to splutter and roar as the armoured division prepared to move out - hatches slamming shut, shells ramming into place and pintle-mounted weapons continued to unleash metal death into the Chaos forces still descending on the base from over the smoke.

Enart finally made it to the commander's hatch of the Hell Raiser, throwing his head down into it to inspect the condition of his crew.

"You morons all still alive in here?!" he yelled down the hatch, already spotting the tops of several heads down in the tank's main compartment. His query was met with the five affirmative responses that he'd been hoping for, but he still did a head count himself to be sure his ears weren't playing tricks on him. "Vairn, Gestople, Rhys, Kayres, Valk. Good."

"Lieutenant!" Enart pulled his head out of the hatch to see who'd called out to him and quickly spotted Princess Luna standing at the Hell Raiser's side with her remaining guards. He could easily guess what she wanted, so he gave his answer before she could even ask her question.

"Does her majesty need a lift?" he chuckled heartily, grinning as he tipped the visor of his flak helmet at the Equestrians. The Knight's Nobilis World Fleet was a harsh place to live and grow up in, so much of its population were somewhat nihilistic and accustomed to the constant threat of death that war brought with it. The most ancient Hive Ships of the fleet had weathered the trials of both the Materium and the Immaterium since before the Age Of Strife - as such many of them were barely still pressurised and plagued near continuously by everything from explosive hull ruptures and O2 production failures to loss of gravity and reactor breaches. Death was a part of life, a fact that was made clear to the spacers of the Nobilis from the day they were born.

So it was easy for him to maintain a bright grin even under the hellish conditions of the attack, surrounded by blood, steel and fire he kept his mind collected and cool.

"It'll be a little cozy, so I hope no one's claustrophobic." he actually laughed as he gestured towards the hatch. The twins went first, the sister assisting her limping brother up the crew ladder and into the hatch. "Make room down there, we're gonna have plenty of company." he called into the tank again as he helped Silent Arrow up onto the turret and then back down into the growling war machine. "Break out the spare heat cloths, Gestople, we're all gonna need one!"

Luna was the last up, stopping for a moment to observe the battlefield they were leaving behind. The evacuation of the Field Hospital was well underway - vast scores of medics and surgeons pushing even greater numbers of wheeled stretchers away from the fighting. They moved towards the downed hulk that had been the force's dropship, seeking cover beneath its immense bulk - to hold out and wait for support from the rest of the battalions, steadily advancing from their landing site several kilometres west of the forward base.

She watched the IA Infantry as they enacted a staggered withdrawal, guarding the rear of the medical company from the attacking pegasi - who were unable to fly over their heads due to the unrelenting efforts of the AA gun crews and the Hydras.

The Astartes were already loading into purpose built transports, Chimeras as Luna was lead to believe, leaving only a single squad behind to defend the base - not that anyone was under any delusion that a single Astartes squad wasn't more than sufficient for such a role.

"Are we really going to move through the fire?" she asked Enart, her tone far more even and calm than she felt in that moment. She'd seen such blazes swallow entire towns in the past, burning for days, even weeks, at a time before finally exhausting their fuel and dying out.

"The Sixth Captain wasn't wrong when he said his plan may sound suicidal..." the Lieutenant ceded, also casting a wistful gaze over the shambling remains of his fire base - before taking a deep, unfaltering breath and turning to face the Princess of the Night. "But it's the only option we got. We can't go around, it'd take too long - haste is key when it comes to engagements with the Ruinous Powers. For the same reason we can't wait for reinforcements from the rear. Air drop is a no-go, obviously." he accompanied those last words by sending a nod towards the broken Devourer, to emphasise his point.

"But the heat-"

"Relax." Enart cut Luna off with a confident grin and a soft hoof touch to her shoulder. Normally she would have recoiled from such contact, not only because of the ancient stigma about touching royalty, but also because of the powerful 'Boundary Issues' she had built up over her millennia spent alone on the Moon. However, she didn't pull away from the junior officer's hoof - allowing the feeling to calm her nerves somewhat.

"Helly has been through worse heat before." he continued, tapping on his tank's turret with a rear hoof and allowing his grin to morph into a sincere smile. "Just wrap up nice and tight in a heat cloth and keep taking hydration packs - with any luck we should make it out the other side without having become steamed buns."

"...Very well..." Luna eventually sighed, moving to lower herself into the Hell Raiser's crew hatch. When only her head remained poking out into the open air, she turned to look at Enart again - baring a small smile of her own. "Silent Arrow likes a glass of red wine after patrols. Just something you may want to bare in mind." she winked at him with an almost devilish grin on her muzzle, before finally dropping the rest of the way into the tank.

He remained standing outside for a moment after that, thoroughly bemused by what he had just been told. "What in the sweet heck is that supposed to mean..." he muttered to himself, detaching the heavy stubber from its pintle mount and throwing it down to the gunner below - before finally climbing half way into the hatch. 

He quickly observed the battle line of Leman Russes as they conducted their final preparations. A vast, green shape rumbled into the corner of his vision as he did so. The Hellblade Strike on the Hearth was already advancing, flanked on both sides by the two Predator tanks that had dropped with it.

"Woah..." someone below breathed as Enart picked up the bleeping vox headset built into the wall not far from his command seat.

"Attention Imperial forces that can hear my voice. This is Sixth Company Captain Dragoon, my forces are preparing for lift off now. Assault forces may begin your advance at your discretion."

"This is the commander of the Strike on the Hearth, we are beginning our advance into the flames. Do the other command elements copy?" both voices possessed the same harsh, cutting tone that all Astartes seemed to share - so Enart had no doubts about the authenticity of either of the communications.

"Sixth Company, Third Squad Sergeant Tiades, I copy."

"First Lieutenant Enart here, I copy." his answer was the last and he quickly followed it up with an order sent out across the Imperial Army frequency that his forces were using. "All vehicles, advance! Close the battle line, five tanks across. Transports bring up the rear. Keep it tight lads and ladies - no stopping between here and the end of the battle. And no, I will not accept dying as an excuse to stop!"

With that said, Enart lowered himself fully into the Hell Raiser's cramped interior - slamming shut and sealing the command hatch behind him.





"Pilot, take us away!" Dragoon called into the intercom set into wall near to the Thunderhawk's loading ramp. He punched the door lock with one wing on the way past, causing the ramp to emit a fierce hiss before rising back into the hull - locking into place with another pneumatic hiss and a 'clunk'.

The low roar of the aerospace-craft's engines steadily evolved into a deafening shriek as their turbines got up to speed, the fuselage creaking ever so slightly as the wings held back the thrust until it was at suitable vertical takeoff power levels. With a final heavy 'clunk' the extreme forces being produced by the engines were redirected, vents lining the underside of each engine housing opening up and projecting said force straight into the ground.

The fleeing Loyalist Equestrians watched with silent awe as the one-hundred-twenty-one tonne brick of a craft lifted itself off the ground and climbed to a hovering position several metres above the ground. There it stayed for several seconds as its pilot performed his final systems checks, swaying only very slightly in the breeze-less, late-afternoon sky.

"All instruments showing green." the pilot's voice came over the Thunderhawk's internal vox, sounding as calm as he would if were about to take a peaceful drive in the countryside and not make a near-suicidal drop run against an Astartes destroyer. With a single, sharp movement of his armoured hoof twisted the handle of the main engine power control ninety degrees, deactivating the vertical thrust, and pushed the lever all the way forward. The shriek of the engines became a near in-audible scream as they cycled up to their full power - throwing the boxy craft forward like a bolt from a bolter. 

"We are away. All craft, form up on me. We'll climb vertically at max power and dive on the Arc Phantom from above." the other three Thunderhawks, who had already taken off and had been holding in a circle pattern, formed up behind the lead vehicle as it began its steep climb. "Remember, its void shields are down - but those defence guns are still working perfectly fine. We'll focus our fire on those and leave the critical systems to the Captain and our brothers."

"We are here to bring the Imperium's justice to the traitors, brothers." Dragoon said solemnly to the jump pack equipped Astartes 'standing' behind him, clinging to the now vertical floor of their transport using the magnetic grips installed in their armour. Unfortunately, these grips were only installed in the bases of their hind leg boots, so they had to lean forward to keep their fore hooves in place. The two squads of Space Marines were lined up, single file, on either side of the forward hold - prepared to jump from the access doors on each side of the hull. "We are here to remind them that The Emperor does not tolerate treachery."

The hull lurched and rattled as the Thunderhawk continued to climb higher, the winds buffeting the craft only growing stronger as time went on.

"Activating rocket propellant. Passengers brace." the pilot's announcement was accompanied by a low rumble, as the engines' screaming jets were closed off and their rocket function took over - allowing the gunship to push even higher through the thinning atmosphere.

"We will bring all of humanity's furious vengeance down upon the Apocalyptians, so that they might understand their grievous mistake." Dragoon proceeded to speak, unperturbed by the tumultuous movements of the craft that he was fixed to. "We will fall upon them as silent reapers - come for their worthless souls."

As the word 'silent' left the lead Astartes' lips, the inhabitants of the hold sealed off their breathing systems and deactivated their vox links - the enemy wouldn't know what was coming for them until it was far to late to stop it. The sixth captain spoke only through his helmet speakers now, but it was enough.

The group of Thunderhawks were reaching the pinnacle of their climb, on the very edge of where air met void - where blue was transitioning into black, but the stars were not yet visible. Each craft finished their ascent with an aileron roll that allowed them to turn and level out. The deployment lights within the lead plane's hold glared red once again, bathing the super-soldiers in a blazing, hateful light.

"WE ARE THE ANGELS OFF DEATH!" Dragoon roared as the door to his right released and began to slide open. The deployment lights flashed green, but were almost immediately drowned by the sunlight that poured in through the openings left by the retreating doors.

"AND WE SHALL KNOW NO FEAR!" all of the Astartes yelled in return, gripped by burning fury they leapt from the Thunderhawk as if it were burning down.

And then, he was surrounded by silence. Filtering out the wind rushing past him at hundreds of miles an hour left Dragoon with very little to listen to at all - other than his own steady breathing. Even his own extremely heightened hearing couldn't grant him the ability to hear the blood, that which still stained his armour, freeze and break away as he plunged downwards at approaching super-sonic speeds. He calmly watched the altitude and velocity reading on his trajectory path - projected onto the eye lenses of his helmet - tracking the two values as they rapidly decreased and increased respectively at extreme rates.

He watched impassively as the Thunderhawk that had ferried him to the upper atmosphere streaked past near-silently, careening past at blistering speeds with nought but a quiet rumble. He caught a glance into its compact command deck as it flew by and saw one of the pilots nodding to him, a gesture he returned in kind - a mutual, wordless wish of good luck. The aerospace-craft's three siblings soon joined it in his field of vision, forming up into a diamond shape once more as they rapidly approached the cloud banks below them.

He still had a fair bit of time before anything of interest was to begin, so Dragoon took some time to look about himself - to see if there was some landmark or notable point for him to observe from his elevated position. He identified the pinprick silhouette of Mt. Canterlot far off to the west, an expanse of water to the east and a long range of snow-topped mountains to the north. His view to the South was obscured by the vast columns of smoke, still rising from the city and the Hellblade's wrathful blaze below.

He calmly watched it all get blotted out as he entered the cloud bank, idly pondering if he would ever see it all in person some day. He hoped not - if he was there then that meant war was there too. He wasn't on this world, hell he wasn't in this universe, to sight-see. Ozonus Prowl's entire existence was devoted to warfare and destruction, his body specifically redesigned and enhanced to make him a killing machine, an army of one and the last sight of any hostile being which may cross humanity's path.

"But you were also made to protect, were you not?"

He blanched, from dead calm to frantic in less than a second, desperately searching the damp, white airspace around him for a source to the voice he'd just heard. It wasn't through his vox link, he'd deactivated it before he'd leapt from the Thunderhawk. It was as if someone had been plunging alongside him and had softly whispered the question directly into the concave ear pieces of his ponified helm. It took the panicked captain a few moments to comprehend the situation, but it  did click eventually. 

It was a psychic communication, or something akin to it in the very least. That was how the Ruinous Powers did it, using their immense power to project thoughts, feelings and images directly into the minds and souls of material beings. But, this didn't feel like the malignant psychic touch of the Warp - a feeling he had become very familiar with during the gruelling months of the Purge Campaign. That was a vile and repulsive sensation, regardless of which of the voices spoke to him, the chants of the Warp disgusted him and that alone was enough to put him off considering their offers and threats - although this aversion was backed up by decades of mental conditioning and thorough training.

However, this voice was different. There were no accompanying sensations, no distinct crawling feeling up the back of his neck, no knotting of his stomach and no feeling of bile rising in his throat. It was just a voice, plain and simple - calm and clear - spoken as if it was a little more than a polite query made over a pleasant dinner.

Dragoon had no time to respond to the probing voice, as his thoughts were interrupted by a set of blaring alarms sounding off directly into his ears. In the mere moments he'd spent reacting to and analysing the voice he'd drifted significantly away from his glide path and was now plunging straight towards the city. He'd broken free of the cloud layer and could now see his surroundings clearly again.

The Arc Phantom was off to his left and was rapidly drawing closer, but on his current trajectory he would miss it by a decent hundred yards or so, passing its starboard bow to continue into the Manehatten skyline. He had to act fast.

Acting on instinct, he spread his mighty wings and levelled out - slowing his descent to give himself some more time. Next he angled his body to face directly towards the destroyer. Finally, with a thought, his jump pack roared into life. With a tooth jarring lurch he shot off towards the traitorous warship, his wings catching lift and allowing him to regain some additional altitude.

As Dragoon continued to close on his target, the tactical readouts on his HUD suddenly lit up once more - squawking furiously as the Arc Phantom was bombarded by a series of concussive explosions. The ship's entire dorsal side seemed to ignite from stem to stern - its frame shuddered under the hellish assault, left exposed to direct strike without the protection of its void shields.

Mere seconds later, the quartet of Thunderhawks came screaming into view with guns flashing. They peeled off from their attack run at the last possible second, one coming so close that it just barely avoided scraping itself against the destroyer as it flew past and below it.

The battered starship would not be taking this punishment laying down however, as mere moments after it was strafed with rocket fire, its defensive armaments began to spring to life. Gigantic autocannons, lining the ship's flanks in massive twin turrets, began firing off shells the size of drop-pods at the four pesky gnats that were attacking the far larger vessel - thankfully with little success.

In cases such as these, the Thunderhawk was far superior to its larger, older cousin - the Stormbird. The smaller, more nimble gunship was more suited to the high-G active manoeuvres required to strike against warships with powerful defence grids, like the Hunter-class.

With their incredibly skilled Astartes pilots the Thunderhawks were able to deftly avoid the destroyer's furious return fire and slowly pick off its defence turrets, one-by one with precise Hellstrike missile barrages - loosing two to three of the deadly munitions from their large, wing-mounted weapons racks. Dragoon still preferred the Stormbird as a transport craft, as did most of his Astartes brothers across the Imperium's space, but he did respect that the Thunderhawk most definitely held some particular advantages that the Stormbird did not.

He was close to the Arc Phantom now, baring down on it's bow section far too quickly for comfort. But not fast enough, he was losing altitude once again and his wings were straining painfully already - beating them would likely result in serious muscle damage. And with his jump pack still cooling down, he had no way of correcting his flight to allow him to reach the destroyer.

"Do I have no other choice?" he growled to himself, considering using his wings despite the very real possibility of seriously damaging them - maybe even ripping them clean off. With all other options exhausted and the time for action quickly running out he tensed his muscles in preparation to follow through with the action, but his focus was broken once again by the same voice projecting itself into his mind.

"Need a little help?" the voice spoke with a reassuring kindness, unlike any the Astartes had ever heard before in his life - even the calm reassurances of his Primarch could not be compared to this being. And that alone was something to be suspicious of...

Thoughts for another time however, as with the voice came a great gust of pleasantly cool wind from below him - seemingly whipped up from nowhere at all. It caught under his extended wings and a refreshing chill seeped into his aching muscles as the gust lifted him to within striking distance of the looming warship.

The phantom breeze left as quickly as it had come, but it had fulfilled its intended purpose. Dragoon lashed out at the ship's hull with his lightning claws - the matter-disrupting power fields that sheathed each blade allowing the claws to bite deep into the solid Adamantium-Ceramite alloy hull. As soon as he had a good purchase the captain deactivated the power fields with a snap thought, to prevent his weapons from cutting deeper into the hull, which would result in him sliding down the shear face of armour to which he had attached himself.

So, there he clung - attached to the bow of the destroyer by nothing more than his claws and his magnetic soles. Gravity tried its level best to dislodge him, attempting to pull him free of his position with his own weight. Put he held firm, fiercely fighting against the pull of the planet and the pained shudders of the Arc Phantom as it was bombarded by the Thunderhawk squadron's fury - fazing out the unnecessary stimuli that assaulted his senses, leaving his mind clear to plan his next move.





Furious Storm-Qrow snarled irritably as he fought to control the errant twitch that was plaguing his right eye, the sound echoing eerily through the dark corridor he was currently striding down - complimenting his rapid, heavy hoof falls like a war horn compliments a heavy beat of drums. It was far from a new experience for him, but familiarity does not always equal comfort or ease. The ceiling was low, or at least it was for him, forcing him to duck slightly under each support strut to avoid having them collide with his new horn - adding to the rapidly growing list of things that were irking him and while admittedly a minor concern in the grand-scheme of life, it was the cause of his manic eye tic.

He had left the housing of the Equestrians in Driger's hooves, relying on the Astartes's current dour mood to see the situation handled correctly. He worried for his son. Of course he worried for them all, no amount of confidence in their abilities could defeat the paternal instincts that connected him to them all. But Driger was normally a bright and jovial individual, with a passionate soul and a bit of a prideful streak - so to see him so quiet and reserved was a great concern for the Second Primarch.

"So many troubles... so little time..." he growled to himself, forgetting both his composure and also that he was not alone in this space. The Sun Princess followed a few paces behind him, clearly uncomfortable in the dimly lit, narrow, metal passageway. He'd been hoping to detach from her company with the rest of her kind, thinking that she'd want to oversee the safe passage of her people through the Excalibur. She had proved him wrong, insisted that they had much to discuss that could not wait and rather than start a debate he'd simply bade her to come with him on his other 'errands'.

They had traversed the ship's corridors in silence, for the most part - the occasional query from her regarding a piece of architecture or perhaps a passing deckhand were the only words to pass between them until now. This would be the first time she would break the silence to ask a question of true import.

"Are there more of you?" it was a vague question, one of the Primarch's numerous personal irritations, so he would respond as he always did to such things - deflect and force the individual asking to be more specific.

"Are you asking if I have more forces in reserve, beyond Excalibur, or if there are more beings like me?" his counter question caused Celestia to blanch a bit, an expression which quickly became an eyeroll and look of slight annoyance. But then it morphed again, into a look of piqued interest - picking up on his wording and going so far as to draw up alongside Qrow to look at him side-on.

"'Beings like you'?" she mimicked, inadvertently striking another of his pet peeves in the process - people who seemed to believe that he'd failed to hear what he himself had just said. However, he had no need to answer her question himself. They had arrived at their destination.

It was a garden, a beautiful garden. It stretched far wider and longer than the tiny walkway that the pair now left behind. For a moment Celestia thought that they'd stepped back into the outside world, beyond the mighty steel fortress's cold, claustrophobic walls and ceilings. But as her gaze wandered upwards she found that said walls and ceilings still remained, although they were no longer constructed from the same cold metal as the rest of the Excalibur. They were covered in countless coin sized hexagonal panels, each one a tiny view screen programmed to replicate a pure blue sky

The metal confines of the space were not perfectly hidden, with her sharp eyes she could just about spy the seems between each panel, but this did not take away from the room's glory in any way - vast fields of flowers and gleaming grass filled the room with cobblestone paths interspersing them at seemingly random intervals.

Great trees stood in pairs or small groups, reaching high into the simulated blue to scrape at the panelled ceiling. Lone shrubs sat and walls of bushes criss-crossed this fragment of a world.

Birds, many of whom were members of species that Celestia could not identify, flitted about in the fake sky. Where they would normally collide with the walls and ceiling of the great atrium, they veered away at the last moment - as though they know well of the farce that the panels presented them.

And there were ponies, hundreds of them - if not thousands - milling about between the trees and across the fields of transplanted green. They were not ponies as her subjects were however, nor were they the same as the Imperials. They were lithe creatures; their legs as thin and dainty as those of a Breezie, their fine clothing hugging tight to their slim barrels. Even the stallions appeared more light and delicate than most Equestrian mares. They did not share the drab coat and mane colourations of the Imperials, sporting all the same variety of hue as her own subjects, but their bodies were marked with symbols that she could not begin to make horns nor tails of. Perhaps the most glaring difference between them and most ponies, however, was their ears. Long, sharp and pointed, they stuck out noticeably from the backs of their skulls like blades - decorated with extravagant rings and more of the symbols that meant nothing to the princess.

"Come on." Qrow's harsh voice brought her back to focus, stepping free of the entrance to the great space and into the garden itself. The 'ponies' in view turned to look at the primarch with a disturbing synchronicity, every head and pair of eyes locking onto the pair in the exact same instant. Their eyes were curious, but cold, moving quickly to her after acknowleging her companion with shallow bows. "We have much to do... and precious little time."





Lieutenant Enart took another vicious swig of the hydration pack he was holding, desperately trying to replenish the liquids he was sweating out at a rate that could quickly fill a medium-sized bucket. The insides of the Hell Raiser were more akin to the core of a steam oven than a tank by this point. Though the walls weren't excessively hot to the touch, thank the stars, the air had become extremely hot and humid - the sealed atmospheric systems of the vehicle barely keeping the cramped compartments liveable as the inferno outside raged on, ever baleful.

"Well, on the bright side..." he chuckled as he tossed the empty pack aside and sat back against the vaguely mild-temperatured ventilation grate positioned behind his head. "I very much doubt we'll need to use the boiling vessel if anyone wants some hot soup." his joke was met with a few half-hearted chortles and sounds of agreement.

It was about as cramped in the tank's interior as the streets of a hive city at midday, providing ultimate proof that - despite its qualities both as a direct assault and defensive unit - the Leman Russ was not a troop carrier in any way, shape or form. Luna was especially squashed by the cramped conditions, having to crane her neck at a funny angle to stop her horn touching the ceiling of the main hull. She, Silent Arrow and the twins were sweating buckets - their fur coats rendered several shades darker than normal by the shear volume of perspiration coating them - and were all panting heavily. Iron Plate, the brother of the twins, seemed to be lulling in and out of consciousness, every now and again his breathing would quieten and his eyes would close, only to shoot wide open again accompanied by a gasp of pain if his left foreleg got jostled. Bronze plate was still being tended by Gestople, the Hell Raiser's left sponson gunner, for her missing ear - hissing a little every time the bandage tape passed over the mangled spot on her head where said ear used to be.

Silent Arrow had accepted a basic healing spell from Luna early on in the journey, reducing many of her shallow scratch wounds to small scabs - if not returning the skin to a fully healed state outright. The fur in those areas was not healed however, resulting in the Lunar Guard Captain being a patchwork of freshly healed skin, scabs and deep, sweat drenched purple. She was checking the crossbow bolts in the quivers mounted to her flank plating, looking for bent shafts and misaligned fletches. What really caught Enart's attention, however, was how she was inspecting them. Her hooves were somehow holding the bolts from the sides - the ammunition seemingly sticking to the bases of the limbs as if they were magnetic.

"How the actual hell are you doing that?" the befuddled lieutenant called down to her from the tank's turret, briefly attracting the attention of everyone in the vehicle - until most of them realised he wasn't talking to them and turned their gazes away again. Arrow cocked an eyebrow at him in response, shooting a quick glance at Luna who shrugged back at her, before calling up to him.

"Doing what?" her voice was gravelly, from the smoke inhalation and the phlegm in her throat caused by the humidity, but still understandable and, now that Enart thought about it, somewhat familiar.

"Holding those bolts. You got magic hooves or something?" it was a sarcastic question of course, such mundane and useful magic was a fallacy, a lie. The only forms of 'magic' that existed were the violent and manipulative sorts employed by psykers and false prophets - both of whom had been extinct aboard the ships of the Nobilis World Fleets since the early days of the Bleeding Void, or the Age of Strife as Imperial records recalled it. 

In the beginning of that age of horrors, psykers (driven mad by the mass influx of power driven into their minds by the writhing Warp) and their supporters had attempted to convince the Shipmasters to plunge their mighty World Ships into the Warp with their Gellar Fields lowered. Some had, given in to the influence of their psionic kin. Others had resisted, and were killed for their defiance - their ships commandeered and submerged, defenceless, into the Immaterium. Of a fleet of thirty city ships, fifty capital grade warships and hundreds of escorts only a fleet of 18 survived the culling - seven cities, one battleship, two cruisers, a battlecruiser and nine escorts of varying types. It had taken the Nobilites this long just to rebuild the World Fleet back to half of its' original strength in city ships. The survivors had learned a harsh lesson back then - psykers were a deadly infection and their 'magic' was the most dangerous symptom. It was a lesson they had since tempered to an extent with experience and a little guidance from Primarch Qrow, but it was still one they kept as a key tenant of their lives; 'Trust a psyker at one's own peril'.

So, suffice to say, it came as a bit of a surprise to Enart and all his Imperial comrades when Silent Arrow laughed a little and replied to his very sarcastic question with:

"Well, yes, actually I do. We all do." suffice to say, this immediately set all of the Imperials present on edge. The images of Princess Luna's combat display at the landing site flashed back into Enart's mind, the telekinesis, the energy blasts, the huge shield and even the healing thing she'd just used on Arrow - he'd assumed them all to be the work of some powerful artefact, mounted to her head and connected to her brain via her horn. Had that all been magic? Like actual fairy tale, Legend of Arturias style magic?

He didn't get the time to completely gather those thoughts as a tremendous *bang* sounded from outside and the tank jolted hard to the right, sending everyone who was seated on the left side of the main hull flying into those lined up opposite them. After a brief moment of balancing on one set of tracks the Hell Raiser slammed back down square again, rearranging the seating positions of almost everyone in the main hull again - the only exception being the driver, Valk, who was belted into her seat.

Enart spent a couple of seconds with his eyes squeezed shut, waiting for the ringing in his ears, from the noise, and the completely separate ringing in his skull, from hitting his head on the side of the viewing cupola, to fade. When the latter sensation dulled a bit, he dared to open his eyes a bit and squint through the left view port, hoping to catch a brief glimpse at whatever had knocked them for six.

The land beyond the Hell Raiser's hull was a far cry from the tranquil, grassy fields it had once been and different again from the trampled, blood-soaked bog it had been less than half-an-hour ago. It was now far more akin to the landscapes of an active caldera - a sea of roaring flames as far as the eye could see, the sky chocked by smoke as black as the night and even the earth itself had been reduced to molten rock and blazing soil in places. All this destruction wrought by a single war-machine's venerable fury.

Enart watched the fearsome blaze through the other view ports after failing to spot what had rattled the tank, gazing through each of the other seven little, armoured windows in turn. It was quite a surreal sight, but seeing it through the square and restrictive ports made the whole thing feel extremely distant. Sure, he could tell very easily that he was right in the centre of this burning hell - he need only spare a quick thought to how slick and hot his skin felt to remind him - but the view itself looked so much like the numerous pict screens he'd seen of worlds that the Great Crusade had visited that some parts of his brain was trying to tell him that it was.

But he knew that wasn't the case, every nerve and sweat gland in his body had been telling him as much for quite a bit now, on top of the pain still pulsing in his ears and the right side of his head.

"Lieutenant Enart come in, this is Astartes Sergeant Tiades, copy."

"I copy, sir. Go ahead." he replied, the tank jolting to the right for a second time, somewhat less violently than the first, just as he got the last word out. A pillar of fire erupted from the ground to the left of the tank, the physical evidence of an air pocket under the surface bursting as the Hell Raiser rumbled over it. "So that's what caught us the first time..." he mumbled quietly to himself away from the mic, as he watched the tower of flame sputter out into nothing as they thundered on. It elicited a few shouts of alarm from the main hull below, but did nothing to hinder the tank's journey across the blazing hellscape towards the city and certainly didn't throw everyone around the tank like ragdolls as the first blast had.

"The Strike on the Hearth is reporting that the temperature outside is starting to decrease and the visibility is improving. Can you confirm this?" Tiades was a very straight forward individual, if Enart's previous missions alongside the veteran Astartes were anything to go off at least. He asked simple questions and gave simple orders, although often as part of a greater overarching plan formulated by the Sergeant with the aid of another strategist. It wasn't that he thought his superior was stupid, far from it, but he was certainly a practitioner of the simpler ways of war.

"Only one way to find out sir, gimme a moment. Keep your head down Vairn, I'm popping the top." with that said, he haphazardly whacked the turret hatch lock handle with his hoof, turning it to the 'Open' position, before throwing the hatch wide open and sticking his head out.

Suffice to say, he almost immediately regretted this decision. The swell of heat that washed over him as his head cleared the hatch was unbearable - even through the heat cloth that covered his muzzle and neck he could feel it against his skin. The flames that lapped at the exterior of the tank's main hull only added to the issue, sending flushes of hot air at him with each individual sway of each individual peak of fire.

However, the mere fact that he was able to stand the heat (albeit barely) was proof that they were out of the worst of the firestorm - which in turn meant they weren't terribly far away from getting shot at by artillery again. He winced at the sight of all the peeled paint and scorched marks that covered the turret of his tank, knowing full well he would be getting an extremely monotone rap on the knuckles, err hooves, from the adepts of the Mechanicum come this battle's end.

"Lord Tiades, Lieutenant Enart here." instead of returning to the inside of the tank he had brought the receiver phones and transmitter up from within the vehicle, into the exposed heat of the outside. There was some minor crackling in the response from Tiades, but not so bad that it was unintelligible. "I can confirm that the heat has subsided to tolerable levels my lord. The visibility has started to improve as well."

"Then you'd best make ready for the battle lieutenant, we will be breaking free of this blaze soon..." the Astartes's response was curt and simple as always and was rounded off with the distinct *click* that indicated that he'd terminated the link. Keeping vox chatter and most noise in general, aside from the barking of guns and the roaring of chainswords, to a minimum was a policy in keeping with one of the most basic Scarred Swords' principles in combat; 'A good sword cuts cleanly and quietly, to make sound is to indicate a defect of function, a detail an enemy need not know'.

The Swords descended onto the field of battle in deathly silence, cut the enemy down to the last soldier and left without a word. They had little-to-no involvement with the process of rebuilding a world that had to be forcefully brought to compliance - that role was left to whichever poor sap that Primarch Qrow left behind as planetary governor.

The Second Legion's Primarch had no eye for architecture or city building, having spent his formative years fighting his way, both figuratively and literally, up the command structure of the then Nobilis Fleet's flagship; the Great Dark's Watch. His sons were much the same, many were either voidborn or the children of the feral tribes of Gaia, so had no care at all for the concerns of rebuilding burned homes or reconnecting the shattered remains of a world's infrastructure. They sought only the fires of warfare and the din of battle.

"DAEMON!!" Enart did not even have time to announce that they were free of the worst of the flames before warning screamed through the company vox. There was a shriek as armour tore, followed immediately by an explosion that rocked the Hell Raiser - as the tank on her left was ripped open by a charging Chaos spawn, a Bloodcrusher of Khorne. The brass armoured war beast had slammed headlong into the tank and gone clean through its plating, exposing its ammo and fuel to the flaming ground they road over.

This beast was only the first of many, a massed cavalry charge of nigh-unstoppable blood crazed steeds ridden by Bloodletters of Khorne. They tore through seven tanks and three transports before the Imperials could even react.

It was a deadly play by the Ruinous Power of the Blood God and it left the Imperials reeling...

[End of Entry]