Planet-fall was in ninety hours. Already the faint rumble of strike vessels testing their long-unused engines was echoing through the bleak fog over Mount Nowhere. The three of them stood in a black valley beneath the walls of rust; Thollr's chaplain, Blodfjord's lexicanum and the apothecary Frosti.
'I dreamt last night,' chaplain Heilagr spoke into the fog with no intent of being heard, 'a child slew a giant, then cut off his own face with the muzzle of a pistol.'
''Tis some portent,' the librarian replied him.
'Snerra, We have a fallen son in our midst.'
'My lord...?'
'He is one of the 3rd;' the rare sound of the apothecary's voice ensured all who were near listened, 'I know of who you dreamt, my lord. Sundr, his name, 2nd flokk flamer; I began to treat his migraines back on Rathus Prime, but they have only worsened and to the point where he can no longer see.'
'Then we must--' the remark was not finished-- Snerra had heard the scream minutes before any of the others. Before any a word spoken he had turned and begun to sprint up the cliff face on columns of black exhaust-- and before Heilagr could question the librarian's actions the air was rent with a broken, shrieking howl that echoed back and forth over the Astartes' heads before the darkness at last caught it and stilled it.
'Brother Sundr,' the chaplain hissed. And they ran.
They reached at length the precipice where the members of Blotfjord 2nd made their Eyre, and found the lexicanum wrestling with the blood-slicked figure of Sundr, who, it seemed was intent on ripping his wrists to pieces with the screaming chain-knife in his hand; and though Snerra was in plate he struggled to contest with him. The surprise and the speed at which it all happened had nulled the psychic might in his body and it took both Heilagr and Frosti to calm the trembling Sundr and cut out the chain-knife from his grip. Blood wept from the Astartes' pores and his feathered body was convulsing with shivers of terror, terror, yes!
What but a vision would cause this?
'Calm him, calm him why do you not!' Snerra flinched beneath the hissing noise of the chaplain's voice, 'he has had a vision, and he must confess it me, now, now!'
Presently the white face of brother Sundr was upwards turned to the pyramid-headed chaplain and his trembling hands were eclipsed in his black gauntlets. No words were spoken for some hours, and when those hours passed, Sundr's lips parted and he said, 'I murdered Him.'
Snerra vented a despairing sigh of anguish and Frosti turned and hid his face in his hands. If these words bothered the chaplain he did not show it.
'I... I had found a hallway,' Sundr tried again to overcome emotion, 'it led on for ever. the bodies of people I did not know lined the walls, they plastered the floor and the ceiling was another floor above. I was at the end of all things. Asylum cells every step-- but-- but then-- but--'
'Calm yourself!' Heilagr snapped, drawing a sharp intake of air from the Astartes before him. 'Did you see
Him? What-'
'I did! Behind the iron bars at the hall's end, I saw Him! But the hall led away behind him. and I couldn't reach Him, nor could I break the bars... I entered a door and found a ladder that--'
'Did He not speak?' The Chaplain snapped, 'He spoke!'
'No he-- He, yes! He spoke to me!' Sundr was beginning to lose control. He had managed a lash across his right wrist which now wept glittering crimson through the chaplain's iron fingers, and his anguish was so, that his haemastamen was no longer working. 'He said the Sagodjur Fjorlag would be returned to the joy of the VIIth legion if only I would listen, but I did not! I could not, I was, I was too worried to find Him again... again... I descended to the end of the end's end and found nothing but a deeper drop and a round pit like a well I had to climb up out of; the walls rent my hands and so often I fell, I fell upon the dead bodies of my brothers. Now I know who they were-- my own flokk...'
Trembling words collapsed into bleak silence that echoed on and on into the void until the chaplain shook Sundr's hands and insisted angrily that he continue.
'...He was dead! I found Him laid out upon the floor a corpse! No trace of death upon Him but the blood spilt from His lips across the walls... His armour was black with rust and burning now, all burning, oh Dorn, my Lord!'
Sundr broke down into fitful, agonised weeping, and would not be silenced for a great long while until Frosti at last produced a glass capsule and drove it's needle into the Astartes' neck. Sundr spat blood and arched back with a cry, but was then still.
'He was my god...' he mumbled, 'He was my god and I murdered Him, murdered Him...'
Heilagr lifted the Astartes' gaze to somewhere where his own might have been and answered him with the damning words he remembered speaking on so many occasions like this before;
'No price will pay for your transgression; no sacrifice will clean your sin, not even death will do, no! Arise,
Murderer, and I will bear you forth to your new Doom.'
Sundr was then bound with chain and barbed strand and led to the depths of the reclusam amid an entorage of weeping flagellants and led on by Heilagr, until they reached the murderer's gate. Beyond lay an iron gallows in a bare chamber without a door where he was hung, unfettered for a length of time even he could not comprehend, for all thought of sleep was driven from his mind by the horrible visions that plagued his closed eyes, even to blink he saw them; and so he shall go on to the end of his days when the lack of sleep drives him to suicide...
At the very end Sundr was given a new suit of plate, a black suit carven with words of shameful spite and hatred; he was led out and the reclusam presented him then with the great knife of Murderers before him, a horrible eviscerator they name the
End of the end's end. Sacrifices were made and the blame for the Primarch's death was laid upon Sundr and his weapons before they returned him in shame to the Chapter, a shallow husk filled with little more that resentful anger, a bitterness none of his former brothers could imagine, for they called him a god-murderer, and so he shall be beyond death.
Wargear:
Bolt pistol
frag & krak grenades
Lefthand Cross: There is only one of these suits of artificer armour. Blackened with rust and age, for none deign to clean such abysmal plate, the only safeguard it grants the wearer is increased psychic might by the spirits of Murderers past.
It grants a 2+ invuln save and the murderer is capable of nullifying enemy psyker attacks directed at him; however, if he rolls a double 6 he himself Perils.
The end of the end's end: Reputedly made from fragments of
Storm's Teeth, the mighty chainblade of the Praetorian of Terra. A weapon so unwieldy and enormous it is equipped with servitor-controlled grav-stabilisers.
***
I'm very,
very pleased with this fellow, 'specially the servitor bound to the weapon. Three weeks of dry-fitting really does pay off. I'm sorry for the long-winded story; you see, the longer it takes to assemble and finish a character, the longer the fluff-- actually, I'm not sorry. I thought, instead of listing off what he was made of, I could answer your questions if you have any, that'll be fun.
Bye-bye for now.
D
