Dark Apostle

Kol Badar laughed as the Cult Mechanicus wasted its ammunition. All the while, the Word Bearers marched relentlessly forwards, shielded by the flesh of the Imperial slaves.

The Chaos Space Marines began to fire their own weapons. Lascannons from the lower reaches of the ridge seared down through the gloom, spearing into the heavy weapon platforms grinding along slowly. Predators of ancient, extinct design and Land Raiders daubed with Chaos sigils added their own weight to the fire, and the demented Dreadnoughts and daemon engines roared in excitement, bitterness and anger as they sighted the foe. Battle cannons boomed, autocannons shrieked, missiles screamed through the rain and heavy bolters barked.

The Anointed opened up, cutting down the last of the slaves as they neared the true foe. Striding forwards, Kol Badar saw the approaching ranks of Skitarii through the press of frantic slaves and impatiently shot down those in his way.

The front rank of the foe consisted of heavily augmented servitor warriors with massive shields built into their mechanical arms. These shields shimmered with power as they deflected bolter shots, protecting them and those in the ranks behind. They advanced slowly step by lumbering step, a walking barricade, firing their lasguns through the slaves and into the advancing Word Bearers. The top right corner of each shield was cut down to allow the larger guns of those behind to fire. The two opposing forces were close, and the fusillade was furious. Kol Badar grinned as he powered unscathed through the carnage, the revered plasteel plating of his Terminator armour absorbing the incoming fire.

He had ensured that his most vicious, blood-hungry warriors, those who strayed closest to the dedicated worship of blessed Khorne, were the first wave of Word Bearers to engage the enemy, and they cleaved into the foe with brutal force. The heavy shields of the front line of the enemy were hacked down with powerful blows from chainaxes and spiked power mauls, and bolter fire tore into the flesh of those behind. The shield-servitors were slow and lumbering, though they took a lot of punishment before they stopped moving. Kol Badar saw several of them fighting on, even with limbs hacked off and bolt having removed parts of their skulls.

Lasgun shots peppered off Kol Badar's armour like flies, and he punched his talons through a heavy shield, sparks flying and power conduits screaming as the blow impaled the Skitarii through its neck. With a flick of his arm, he hurled the servitor warrior over his shoulder, and unleashed his combi-bolter on full auto into the packed Skitarii ranks behind. These were softer targets. They had been augmented in lesser ways, not taking them fully down the path to becoming mindless servitors. Targeting sensors had replaced their left eyes, and the left halves of their heads were a mass of wiring and mechanics, but their bodies were easily torn apart by the bolter fire of the advancing Word Bearers.

At a distance, they would be dangerous foes, for many of them carried heavier armaments than a humble Guardsman would be able to bear, but up close they were slaughtered by the brute force and speed of the Word Bearers. The Anointed bludgeoned their way into the heart of the Skitarii formation. It mattered not to these elite killers that the enemy fought on after having sustained wounds that would drop a regular human. The Word Bearers, and the Anointed in particular, were far from regular humans themselves - they were demi-gods of war, and they tore apart the Skitarii with fury and passion.

Within ten minutes, as if a switch was flicked inside the mechanical heads of the thousands of remaining Skitarii, they began to re-form, walking steadily backwards as one, while continuing to lay down their withering fire into the Chaos Marines.

With a surge of his servo-enhanced muscles, Kol Badar pushed forwards into the retreating foe, punching the whirling chainblade that served as a bayonet upon his combi-bolter through the pudgy white face of another foe, and ripping the head and spinal column from another, electrodes and sparking fuses still attached to the vertebrae.

Heavily armoured servitors moved to the fore, stalking forwards between the ordered ranks of the lesser warriors, and Kol Badar was pleased to see that these foes were more to his liking. Around the height of a regular Chaos Space Marine, these were heavily armoured in thick, dark, metal armour. The mechanics of their left arms ended in spinning cannons that roared as they pumped fire from their multiple barrels. Ammo-feeds smoked as fresh bullets were fed to the guns from heavy integrated backpacks.