Seraphs of the Emperor’s Judgment

Chapter 222: Ancient Ones

In Soshyan's eyes, the two warriors blurred into an afterimage of ferocious motion, their slashes and thrusts so endlessly varied that it looked like a meticulously choreographed dance.

Sol wielded his twin blades, every strike carrying the speed and power only a true Champion possessed, showering sparks every time steel clashed with xenos talon.

And their opponent answered with an even more furiously aggressive offense.

More sparks cascaded through the darkness, raining over the two combatants and the scarred machinery surrounding them. As they drove each other back and forth across the metallic decking, the brutal duel became an oscillating clash of light and shadow.

Naturally, Soshyan had no intention of standing idly by. He kept his eyes locked on the fray, waiting for his opportunity.

Finally, he spotted a split-second opening. Sol's masterful parries forced the mysterious stranger to expose his left flank for a fragment of a second. Instantly, the Holy Flame Sword descended toward the target like a falling meteor.

"Hah, attempting a sneak attack?"

But the stranger's reflexes were unimaginably fast. Deflecting Sol's continuous barrage of thrusts, he simultaneously executed a timely, evasive back-step.

The Holy Flame Sword merely struck a shower of sparks off the iron plating guarding his opponent's shoulder, singing the adjacent leather.

Then, a sharp, metallic clink echoed from the darkness as something dropped to the floor."Broken again..."

The man muttered a curse before instantly flipping backward and launching himself directly at Soshyan.

Knowing he lacked Sol's sheer technical mastery, Soshyan immediately retracted his blade to assume a defensive guard. But the attacker was already inside his guard, delivering a devastating kick that sent Soshyan flying backward to smash heavily into a thick steam pipe.

With a thunderous clang, the heavily rusted metal pipe buckled and ruptured. Scalding, high-pressure steam blasted over Soshyan's power armor, causing a cascade of garbled warning runes to briefly flood his helmet's tactical display.

The sheer, terrifying power behind that kick was absurd, considering a fully armored Astartes weighed nearly half a ton.

But the attacker didn't stop there. Continuing his assault, he ghosted past Sol's attempting intercept with phantom-like speed, thrusting his deadly claws straight for Soshyan's faceplate.

Soshyan immediately hunched over and rolled sideways, narrowly evading the lethal strike. The heavy metal gauntlet smashed deep into the floor where his head had been a fraction of a second prior, violently shattering the rockcrete.

Sensing his opponent looming directly over him, Soshyan's combat instincts drove him to convert his roll into an upward thrust—if he could put both hands behind this strike, he might stand a chance.

The reality, however, was that he struck nothing but empty air.

Before Soshyan could even scramble up from the deck, the mysterious stranger, hanging momentarily in mid-air like a giant bird of prey, brought both feet violently stomping down.

"Urgh—"

Soshyan instantly felt as though a mountain had been dropped onto his back. His power armor groaned ominously under the devastating downward force, and he was driven face-first back into the floor.

Although he couldn't turn his head, Soshyan could feel the man crouching atop him, exactly like a raptor perching upon its freshly captured prey—he couldn't help but be reminded of the massive statue guarding the temple entrance.

Then, he heard the horrific screech of metal grinding against plasteel as his attacker lightly dragged those terrifying, massive claws across his helm.

The sound was unimaginably cold, piercing his eardrums and burrowing straight into his soul.

"At least you're marginally stronger than Alajos..."

Soshyan had no idea who this man was referring to, but the sheer, dripping contempt in his tone sparked a furious wrath within him.

Holding his breath, Soshyan's hand began to slowly creep toward the frag grenades clipped to his belt...

Suddenly, the crushing weight vanished from his back.

The attacker had disengaged, immediately followed by the staccato roar of bolter fire.

Sol had driven the shadow off Soshyan's back with his bolt pistol, throwing himself back into the melee with drawn blades.

The stranger contemptuously swiped his claws to deflect a thrust aimed at his gut. Siding-stepping directly into extreme close-quarters range, he slammed his spiked metal gauntlet brutally against Sol's helm.

Sol staggered backward. One of his black eye-lenses was shattered, and the ceramite of his helm was deeply dented by the spikes.

A thin line of blood trickled down from beneath the shattered lens. It was the first time Soshyan had ever seen Sol bleed.

Having landed a successful blow, the stranger followed up with a vicious, sweeping slash that carved through the Aquila on Sol's chestplate—had Sol not violently thrown himself backward in the nick of time, the strike would have likely spilled a torrent of blood and viscera across the deck.

Sol attempted to counter-attack, his twin blades dancing in his hands. Deflecting the claws, he drove a blade up the inside of the attacker's left shoulder, attempting to cleave into the cowl-shadowed head, but the strike was instantly parried and locked down by the massive Genestealer talons.

Then, a blazing longsword cleaved the space between them.

Soshyan had rejoined the fray. The three preternatural warriors instantly became entangled in a chaotic, three-way melee.

BOOM————————!

However, barely ten seconds into this renewed clash, the entire temple shuddered violently against a deafening roar, shaking loose showers of pulverized stone from the ceiling above.

"Damn it!"

Seemingly realizing what had just happened, the shadow spat a curse and bolted for a shadowy corner of the cavernous room.

Moments later, Soshyan heard the heavy scraping of something large being dragged across the floor.

The cavern suddenly grew even darker. Soshyan could only vaguely make out the silhouette of the man as he emerged, dragging a long, heavy object behind him.

"Careful..."

Sol whispered a warning, adopting a defensive stance.

A few seconds later, the shadow planted its feet firmly, less than fifty meters away from Soshyan.

Soshyan carefully held his sword horizontally across his chest, uncertain of his opponent's intentions, until Sol suddenly shouted:

"Above!"

Amidst the breathless silence, a sudden, roaring mechanical scream erupted. Soshyan heard it clearly; it was undeniably the unmistakable roar of an activating chain-weapon.

Then, the entire cavern shook as a massive shadow plummeted from the darkness above.

Soshyan and Sol simultaneously threw up their weapons to block.

In an instant, the colliding weapons locked together. The sheer physical will and bio-engineered strength of all three combatants deadlocked, while the servos of the two Space Marines' power armor shrieked in protest.

Soshyan couldn't even clearly define the shape of the weapon bearing down on them.

The stone floor beneath their boots began to fracture and buckle, the rockcrete groaning as it yielded to the unimaginable pressure.

Finally, the pent-up kinetic energy explosively released.

A thunderous shockwave rebounded violently from the floor, throwing the combatants apart. Sol was hurled completely backward through the air.

Soshyan rolled several times before arresting his momentum in a half-crouching guard. But the shadow had also regained his footing and charged again, swinging his massive weapon like a great, winged beast.

He let out a low, guttural growl. Using some invisible force, he grasped and hauled the cloaking shadows of the room forward, wrapping the darkness tightly around his bat-like silhouette.

Soshyan fought to push himself up on one knee, gripping the Holy Flame Sword desperately with both hands.

His body was trembling. Grey Marrow surged through his veins, his primary heart hammering furiously against his ribs as he dug ever deeper for more strength.

A domain of absolute, hollow silence bloomed outward around him, violently ripping away the invisible psychic tide washing over him.

The shadow let out a soft exclamation of surprise, but then simply chuckled. Allowing the clinging shadows to dissipate, the figure closed the distance to Soshyan as a blurry, softly laughing phantom.

"Hold!"

Suddenly, a thunderous shout rang out just as the temple suffered another violent tremor.

Incredibly, the shadow actually halted, stopping a mere ten meters away from Soshyan.

Soshyan stood up and saw Sol standing roughly a hundred meters away, the tip of his sword pressed directly against a large, metallic cylinder nearly twice the height of a man. Staring at it for a few seconds, Soshyan suddenly remembered its proper designation—a stasis-pod.

Astropaths frequently slumbered within such pods when undertaking long-haul void journeys.

"Saul Tarvitz. I don't recall you ever being so utterly dishonorable."

The mysterious stranger whispered, his voice thick with highly suppressed, lethal fury.

"It truly is a blessing that you still remember my name."

Sol let out a soft chuckle, but his words only confused Soshyan further.

"Instructor Sol, do you know this man?"

"I know him; how could I not, right? Are you going to continue hiding your face?"

Hearing Sol's words, the man offered no reply. Instead, with a gesture of profound irritation, he roughly tore away the heavy, leathery cowl masking his features.

He was a towering male, clad in a form-fitting bodysuit of black leather. Judging strictly by his physiological proportions, he was undeniably an Astartes.

His face was gaunt and hawk-like, marred by two jagged pale scars tracing down the left side of his forehead and the corner of his cheek, making him appear as though he were permanently sneering in icy contempt.

It was incredibly difficult to determine his exact age from his appearance alone, but the relentless passage of time had undoubtedly left its mark upon him; his short-cropped hair was heavily salted with grey, and deep lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes and brow.

Covering his torso was a crude, primitive harness of iron plating bearing obvious signs of hand-forging, heavily adorned with spikes and leather straps, with a few fresh furrows carved into the metal.

The terrifying reality that this man had fought two fully armored Astartes to a standstill—while completely lacking power armor of his own—left Soshyan profoundly disturbed by the sheer scale of his opponent's martial prowess.

And gripped firmly in his hands was a massive, two-handed chain-glaive. This was the weapon he had just used to simultaneously overpower both Soshyan and Sol.

"Soshyan, allow me to introduce him."

Sol kept his sword leveled precisely at the stasis-pod with one hand, while pointing his other hand accusingly directly at the mysterious man.

"First Captain of the Eighth Legion. Commander of the Atramentar. Member of the Kyroptera. The butcher who slaughtered countless loyal warriors during the Great Rebellion. The absolute only piece of garbage in a legion of scum who still possessed even a shred of decency."

"The Prince of Crows, Jago Sevatarion."