The Beast Arises

The Last Wall plunged to earth. The two squads leapt from the Thunderhawks, jet packs streaking fire. Their bolters were on full burst all the way down. They cut orks down during their flight, and landed with the force of vengeance. Koorland shattered the spine of a greenskin warrior, the impact of his mass and velocity snapping the brute’s armour. He stomped on the struggling ork’s head, crushing it against jagged volcanic rock.

The Last Wall created a crater of flesh. The squads stood in a hole in the midst of the horde. The orks had been charging a few dozen metres to the north. For a moment, there was still a wall of xenos might between Koorland and the moving target. Confusion took hold as the orks came under attack from two points in their midst. Some of them turned to face the Last Wall. Others stayed focused on their first enemy.

For a moment.

A few seconds during which Koorland knew, but could not see, that he had reached his target. He knew what he was about to encounter, but the knowledge had no true weight. There was no visceral understanding. There could not be. He was still on one side of the barrier that separates belief in a legend from its experience.

He fired into the orks separating him from the legend. He and his brothers charged into the mass.

Koorland began to cross the barrier.

The moments passed. Belief met reality, and the shockwave killed dozens of orks.

Something struck a battlewagon. Koorland could see the upper portions of the hull from his position. There was

the sound of a single blow and the vehicle stopped dead. The rear jerked upwards, as if the forward section had been driven into the ground. A concussion wave radiated outwards from the tank’s position. The battlewagon exploded. Orks flew through the air. Koorland staggered as the wave hit him, a sudden hurricane. The blow scythed the enemy before him.

The space ahead of the Last Wall was clear. Surrounded by bodies, lit by the flames of the burning tank, the legend was there.

Time stuttered. Koorland’s senses grappled with awe. His existence before his transformation into a Space Marine was a blank. The history of that earlier being was lost. So now, for the first time in his memory, he experienced what an unenhanced mortal felt at the sight of the Adeptus Astartes.

Vulkan was a colossus, more pillar than man. He was an icon carved of granite and night, immovable as a mountain, ferocious as lava. The deep green of his armour’s scales made him a reptile sprung from the dreams and fears of humanity’s past. The forged flames of its design made him the fire of a planet’s core. The skull of one beast adorned his shoulder guard. His cloak was the hide of another. He was a slayer of myth, and he was myth incarnate. His massive hammer pulsed and crackled with energy. Koorland could not imagine lifting it, never mind wielding it. He found it even more impossible to picture anything, be it ork, voidship or world, that could survive its strike.

It was all Koorland could do not to fall to his knees. He was not alone. He was surrounded by the stunned immobility of his battle-brothers.

They did not forget their training and leave themselves vulnerable to the enemy. They were frozen for the space of a single intake of breath, and the orks in their vicinity that still lived were incapacitated for much longer. But oh, the time of that breath stretched to infinity. Though Koorland had witnessed a moon open its jaws and roar, it was only now that he felt the true touch of the sublime. A breath, and his life was in a point of culmination. His existence was already divided into two irreconcilable halves by the destruction of the Imperial Fists. Now it broke in two again. This time, the far side of the crevasse was filled with the fiery light of glory.

The breath, and then war.

No words passed between Vulkan and the Last Wall. They would come later. Now there was the necessity of battle. Koorland looked up at the drake-helm and the infernal red of its lenses. Vulkan inclined his head in a nod. Then destruction came to the foothills of Caldera once more.

The orks closed in. They fought against a storm. The Last Wall formed a circle. They became a fist, a mailed gauntlet. The horde broke itself upon its spikes. Bolter shells punched through armour and flesh. Streams from flamers incinerated brutes who tried to close within melee distance. Monsters in piston-driven armour burned in their metal shells. They died standing, and became obstacles in the path of their kin.