Chapter 58: The Price of Hubris
"What pitiful creatures these mon-keigh prove to be, bloated with ignorant courage."
Blood Reaver Master Rakarth stood upon the command dais of the Thorn of Agony, his bone-wrought battleship cleaving through the void like a blade through flesh.
Through the vast crystalline viewports, he gazed upon the conflagration that painted the darkness, the fires of war illuminating the prey-ships of the Imperium with their pathetic defiance.
His tone carried the arrogance of millennia, dismissing the human fleet as one might regard vermin.
Rakarth's contempt was earned through aeons of suffering inflicted and endured. He was archon of the Blood Reaver Kabal, and among the eldest of Commorragh's denizens, a fossil of cruelty from an age when the galaxy knew different masters.
Born ere the Fall consumed his race in screaming excess, he had witnessed the birth-death of She Who Thirsts with eyes that had already grown cold with centuries of torment.
He had perfected the art of extracting agony, each scream harvested to sustain his withered essence.
His current span of existence exceeded the entire history of mankind's stumbling journey among the stars, it was only natural that he should regard them as livestock.
Rakarth cared nothing for the byzantine politics of the Dark City, devoted solely to the path of exquisite pain.
This raid with the Thorn Conspiracy served but one purpose: to gather sufficient material for his experiments in suffering.
Death had claimed him countless times. In pursuit of the ecstasy found at extinction's threshold, he had often courted oblivion with the hunger of an addict.
Each resurrection had carved away another fragment of his soul, leaving only malice wrapped in flesh that defied natural law.
His exposed vertebrae jutted through rent skin, twisted and malformed. Limbs in various states of decay hung from his corrupted spine like grotesque ornaments.
His visage had been sewn to his skull with strips of tanned hide, creating a mockery of life that should not be.
He resembled a broken marionette animated by spite, a living violation of reality's laws that would drive mortals to madness through sight alone.
The most twisted horrors conceived by human imagination paled before his reality. He was nightmare given form, fear made manifest.
The Thorn Conspiracy had detected the Immaterium's disturbance the moment the Imperial expeditionary fleet translated to realspace.
After brief observation, they had elected to employ time-tested tactics: board the flagship and decapitate the enemy command structure in a single stroke.
Following a perfunctory exchange of fire, the Drukhari vessels used their superior maneuverability to disengage from the escort ships, driving hard toward the massive form of the Emperor's Grand Design.
As they closed distance, the bone-ships concentrated their firepower upon the Imperial flagship. Scythe missiles carved burning contrails through the void, impacting against the vessel's void shields in cascades of tortured energy.
Dark matter lances struck in sequence, each blow designed to drain the enemy's power reserves through systematic overload.
The sustained bombardment pushed the Grand Design's ventral shield generators beyond their tolerance thresholds.
With a thunderclap of discharged energy that lit the void like a dying star, the protective barriers collapsed, exposing naked adamantium to the hungry darkness.
"The mon-keigh shields have failed!" shrieked a Conspiracy warrior, his voice tight with anticipation.
"Let the harvest begin. Let them comprehend the true nature of fear," Rakarth smiled, the expression a horror carved from living flesh.
The Kabal's elite shared his anticipation, their minds already savoring the torments to come.
They would break these humans with exquisite care, each scream extracted with the precision of a master craftsman, each moment of agony stretched to its utmost duration.
The Thorn Conspiracy's fleet encircled the Imperial flagship like carrion birds around dying prey, their positioning designed to prevent any rescue attempt by the escort vessels.
At Rakarth's command, the boarding parties assembled in the translation chambers. Each warrior wore the midnight carapace of their calling, bearing blades honed to molecular sharpness.
They stood upon skyboards, anti-gravitic platforms equipped with razored wings capable of cleaving through power armor with contemptuous ease.
These were the favored steeds of the Drukhari, instruments of swift slaughter and aerial artistry.
The translation altar, wrought from the bones of countless victims, began to glow with eldritch radiance. Reality warped and twisted until a luminous portal tore open in the fabric of space.
"Kill!" commanded the lead warrior, his voice a promise of death.
The bone-ships surrounding the Emperor's Grand Design launched their boarding assault as one, the Thorn Conspiracy committed to total victory.
Aboard the Emperor's Grand Design, the command bridge thrummed with mechanical harmonies, the breathing of secondary systems, the urgent footfalls of crew members responding to crisis, voices raised in coordination and controlled alarm.
"Void shield matrices compromised across multiple sectors."
"Generator array four-five-one, starboard ventral, showing critical overload. Shield gap confirmed."
The augur supervisor gripped his control lectern with mechadendrite appendages, struggling against the ship's motion.
Crimson alarm-lumens painted his augmetic features in hellish light as he turned toward the Golden Throne.
"My Lord Emperor," he called across the strategium. "Augur arrays detect massive Immaterium disturbance. Warp-translation signatures are spiking, they are preparing to board."
"Focus all sensor arrays upon the translation coordinates," the Emperor commanded, His voice carrying absolute authority across the bridge.
His gaze fell upon the assembled Primarchs. "All save Konrad will respond to boarding actions across the vessel."
The Master of Mankind's attention shifted to the pale figure of the Night Haunter. "You and your Eighth Legion will execute counter-boarding operations against their flagship. You have complete tactical discretion. Show them the true meaning of terror."
"It shall be done, Father." Konrad's smile was the promise of nightmares made flesh. "They will learn fear from its master."
The Primarchs departed to coordinate with their Legions, each moving with the purpose of born weapons unleashed.
Without warning, circular patterns of eldritch light blazed to life across the command platform.
The Custodian Guard reacted before mortal senses could register the threat. Constantin Valdor moved fastest of all, his guardian spear igniting with power field energies that turned its blade into concentrated death.
An elliptical portal tore open in reality's fabric, and the translation corridor stabilized.
"Mon-keigh filth, taste obli, "
The first Drukhari warrior never completed his battle-cry. Valdor's spear had already cleaved him in twain, the consecrated blade parting black carapace as though it were parchment.
The xenos was bisected in a spray of alien blood, the stench of spilled vitae fouling the sacred air of the bridge.
His skyboard careened past, its razored wings embedding deep into the marble deck plating.
The remaining Conspiracy warriors had no opportunity to comprehend their error. The Custodian Guard, their gene-forged bodies enhanced beyond even Astartes capabilities, moved with transhuman precision.
In the space between heartbeats, they had reduced the boarding party to scattered fragments of flesh and shattered bone.
The engagement lasted perhaps three seconds. The Drukhari who had dared defile the Emperor's bridge were annihilated utterly.
"Advance through their portal," Valdor commanded his warriors. "Show them the folly of challenging the Emperor's Custodians."
The golden-armored guardians required no further instruction. They plunged through the still-active translation gate like avenging angels, bringing righteous slaughter to the xenos ship beyond.
The Drukhari crew on the receiving end of the portal watched in disbelief as the Custodians emerged from their own boarding tunnel.
For a crucial instant, shock paralyzed their response, and in that instant, they died.
Guardian spears swept through alien flesh like wheat before the scythe, each stroke guided by transhuman skill and gene-forged strength.
The boarding chamber became an abattoir, xenos blood painting the bone-wrought walls in patterns of death.
The Custodians advanced through the vessel like a golden plague, turning the Thorn of Agony into a charnel house. No quarter was given, no mercy shown.
The bone-ship's commander, lifted by a single guardian spear through his torso, stared in dying incomprehension at his killer.
"How did these mon-keigh become so strong?" he gasped, alien blood frothing from his lips.
"By the Dark Prince's embrace... are these monkeys cheating?"
The boarding actions against other sections of the Emperor's Grand Design had initially proceeded according to Drukhari expectations.
Their superior mobility and weaponry allowed them to carve through mortal crew with contemptuous ease.
But when the Primarchs arrived with their Astartes Legions, the balance shifted decisively.
The gene-sons of the Emperor required no orders, no coordination. They were weapons of war incarnate, each strike precisely calculated for maximum lethality.
The Conspiracy warriors found themselves outmatched not merely in strength, but in speed, skill, and tactical acumen.
Many of the Astartes bore the genetic modifications of captured technologies, their already superhuman capabilities enhanced beyond previous limits.
They moved with a swiftness that matched the xenos, struck with force that shattered alien carapace, endured wounds that would fell lesser beings.
Within thirty standard minutes, every Drukhari warrior who had dared board the flagship lay dead, their remains scattered across decks consecrated by Imperial blood.
Simultaneously, Konrad Curze and his Eighth Legion had completed their own boarding action against the Thorn of Agony.
Through the bone-ship's corridors echoed a voice like the whisper of oblivion itself:
"We are the Night Haunter, and we have come for you."
The hunt had begun.