Battle of the Ruby Garden

Nuceria Prime, The Red Citadel

The Exalted Palace

Ichabod's eyes took in the brass windbreakers that lined the outside of the palace balconies, the marble pillars carved in the likeness of encumbered stone men, and the long tiled floors that seemed to stretch endlessly across rows of empty corridors. These were sights he had grown to know well as a child. Memories flooded the mind of the Outcast, despite his half-hearted attempts to hold back such a powerful tide. He didn't come back to the place of his birth for the sake of nostalgia, yet his subconscious had intentions of its own.

He knew the palace like the back of his hand.

For in a time when his siblings were mentored with such dedication by the brightest minds in all of Nuceria Prime, Ichabod was left to teach himself. Just like his father, God-King Angronius, who studied the world and all its secrets himself and without the aid of learned scholars. The child explored, worked to hone himself far from the disapproving eyes of his kin, and grew beyond the shadow of House Thal'kyr. Both the common and untraveled passageways, these he learned himself and studied the secrets whispered from the mouths of both lord and servant when all other prying eyes were no longer upon them. He remembered scaling the towers unseen and slipped away into the gardens, then spied on the queen-mother as she privately discussed matters of court with her sycophants. Then, at night, he would spy on his older brothers as they partied and fornicated with the harlots of the city.

He knew all these sights and never wished to see them again, especially considering how much they have changed over the years. In fact, with the daemonic incursions that came with the cultist onslaught, such a feeling was further reinforced. Cursed was the place of his birth, cursed was his coming to the world. His own mother made sure he knew about it. The walls, ceiling and floors began to move like flesh pulsating with vigorous veins. The air grew thick with the influence of the Warp, but curiously it didn't seem to affect the little group traversing the invaded halls of the Exalted Palace. Ichabod's aura cast a large protective bubble about them, driving away the evil seeping into his childhood home.

The Outcast paid little heed to the faint whispers resonating from all sides. There were daemons in the old stones, the brick and marble. The ruins of Costigane had a similar bearing about them, a familiar feeling Ichabod wished to be rid of.

Then, he felt Morgana's soft hands cling to his arm. All of a sudden, he started to think about the few good things in that life he left behind. He found that it was far easier to recall the worst moments, leaving out what joys he gained growing up in the palace. He remembered the time when he begged to come with his siblings to the city, to see the world as they did and revel in the luxuries afforded to the House of Thal'kyr. He wanted to be like them, young as he was. Alas, no man nor woman would have him there, just as it was within the palace grounds. Yet there was his half-sister, who braved the cursed aura he emitted like a tiny sloop in a raging maelstrom. As far as he was concerned, the sons of Angronius could keep their harlots. Morgana showed him kindness whereas all others withheld it from the Outcast, as did his father.

Angronius too showed him love, a father's love. It was the only reason why he'd never truly removed himself from the name of his house, the name 'Thal'kyr'. A troubled upbringing would fashion a man out of hard stone rather than smooth marble, yet the former would weather a storm better than the latter- words spoken about Ichabod's standing in the family, borne from the lips of the God-King. The Outcast was not raised like him in the ludus gladiatorius, but the coarse path of his youth gave him a clearer understanding of the divine blood that flowed in his veins, far better than his siblings who have been raised in opulence and praise.

More War Hounds showed up to join their party, among them was Mercerandres.

The Orcusian Dragon's trials had been rudely interrupted by the cultists, who soon found to their dismay that he was named so aptly for his storied ferocity. He wore the garb of a spacemarine neophyte that had been slashed in many places, and the shirt hung from his waist in tatters. It bared his chest, showing the many scars from his many battles all over the homeworld. Mercer's long black hair was braided into six knots and swung from the back of his head like a serpent's tail. His hands grasped the shaft of his double-bladed chain-axe, Maneater, still wet with the blood of traitors.

He was, like all of Sonjita's sons, his mother's pride and joy. The primaris' divine figure was a shadow of the Primarch's, but an uncanny reflection nonetheless. Besides Ichabod, he stood closest to his father's image. Mercer's cold hateful eyes, Angron's eyes, beheld the mess that had become of his palace home. His dark expression relaxed somewhat when he realized that the group coming to meet him was his family, and a few much needed terminators. But when he saw that the Pariah was present among them, he reverted back to his incensed countenance.

"Ichabod..." He said in a stony and unfriendly tone, "What are you doing here?"

"Hunting mystic circles that have taken root beneath our ancestral home." The exile replied, deciding it would be the last time he'd have to explain his intentions. "The more I see how far their reach has come, the less confidence I have in the integrity of our house."

"You can cast blame later." Corso barked, "Need I remind you both of the walls collapsing in on us?"

"We move towards safe passage." Ichabod pointed to the end of the corridor they were in, "Afterwards, we shall move to stop this incursion. The heart of the cult pulsates from deep within, and there we shall pierce it."

"I fear this passage is far from safe." One of the terminators growled, pointing to the shadowy shapes moving towards them from the opposite end of the long hall. "They come for us!"

"Then unleash bolts, brothers!" Corso commanded, raising his sword and bolt-pistol. "We cleanse this place of the traitorous and anomalous alike!"

The cultists came. Some faces were fresh, some familiar. Loyal servants now broken to treachery, soldiers of the Nucerian Redguard corrupted by the touch of Chaos, and daemonic entities given malformed flesh. In the Imperium, cultist incursions were uncommon but they were not new. Under Imperial propaganda, they were considered madmen given fully to anomalous and inexplicable foreign powers. There were no gods beyond the veil, such was the word of the Emperor himself, but Nuceria knew the truth.

There were gods, and they hunger. But as for the cultists, they had forgotten that a god ruled Nuceria even from afar and his blood ran through the veins of the very ones they now faced.

"STOP!" Lotara roared, and the horde halted in their footsteps. Her voice rang in their ears like a shrill dog-whistle, forcing errant hounds to heel. The Warp rippled with the psychic power of the woman's voice, the walls and the ground trembled. Their flesh failed them and they stood rooted upon the tainted floor. "KNEEL!"

And they did. With one word, she sent them prostrated upon the ground as repentant sinners. Polgara summoned her own power and filled the hall with warpfire, burning away the men and women who dared invade the palace. The daemonic abominations that proved hardy enough to survive the sorcerous attack lumbered forward, only to be cut down by Angronius' sons. By bolter and sword, they pushed through towards the exits.

"You return to us with an impressive form, Ichabod." Lotara remarked, "Who has trained your arm to bear a sword so skillfully?"

"A fellow exile." Ichabod muttered.

"Oh?" Morgana chimed in, "Does he have a name?"

The Outcast sighed, "She is called Minerva."

Eyes flashing with anger, Sonjita grabbed Ichabod by the shoulder and spun him about to face her despite feeling the searing touch of his bare skin upon hers. Her words were as sharp as the bite of steel, "She yet lives? You had words with that treacherous bitch?"

"Guard your tongue when you speak of her." Ichabod growled, "That woman had shown me a mother's warmth denied by you and the one who bore me. I know her history, I am no fool. She lives within Costigane in a realm of monsters, exiled by my father and remains there still for what she had done all those years before. And yet it is by her guidance I have been set upon the trail of these cultists, of which up until now you have taken of little note."

No one saw it, but Polgara's face fell at Ichabod's words. His words cut deep, no matter how tightly she had closed her heart to him.

"Yes yes, you made your point about our shortcomings." Corso said, "You will see our defenses improve to impregnable state once this mess has been cleaned."

But Sonjita was not to be swayed, "Once this is done, I will have words of my own with that woman."

"Turn your mind away from such thoughts!" Ichabod roared, his voice taking her aback for it was as though Angronius himself was speaking through him. Behind the mask, his eyes were burning with the Primarch's fury. "If you lay a hand on her, your life will be forfeit!"

"So will yours if you make such an attempt." Mercer warned his half-brother, stepping between him and his mother. A similar fire was burning in his own eyes.

For a moment, the family stood divided and ready to strike one another. Indeed, without the patriarch himself to keep them from each other's throats, the bonds of blood were fragile. Fortunately, there were still some saner heads among them.

"You are all a pack of fools!" Corso thundered, for it was all he could do. "Must we mire ourselves in this drama while the House of Thal'kyr crumbles to dust? I swear by the gods, I have better luck with the legion than setting you all to single purpose!"

The group fell silent with shame as they made for safer ground, where several detachments of the Nucerian Redguard awaited alongside the spacemarines. The War Hounds, upon seeing one of their commanders among them, approached Corso and inquired of the state of the palace grounds. Titus' injuries were seen to, Mercerandres went off to get better armor and Ichabod left them to their plans. Frustrated with the lack of cooperation he received, he promptly walked back towards the heart of corruption. The man felt he had no need for their aid. He'd come to ferry them to safety, in respect for the blood they shared, and he succeeded in that task.

"Cab, wait!" Morgana bade him to pause, "Would you go in advance of proper force?"

"I have dealt with worse with even less." The Outcast declared. It wasn't a boast, but a mere fact. The blood of the pariah, his curse, was his greatest weapon against the daemons and their servants. When he fought them in the ruins and the radioactive wastes of Costigane, he had but a handful of adventurers. Mortal men and women, all dead now after facing the horrors of the Warp. "Every minute they delay, the further the corruption spreads. The time to strike is now, and I cannot wait. As for you, it would be best if you remain with the queens. If the enemy proves too strong, I would have you far from harm's way."

"And you would willingly place your head between its jaws, far beyond the reach of the aid of your brothers?"

"I have no brothers, Morgana! Titus is a popinjay, Corso and Mercer are glory-seeking cunts! I would not have them at my side in the coming battle, lest they stand in my way..."

Morgana pouted but said nothing else. She gave her half-brother's arm a good squeeze and let him go. The two-pronged blade, Usurper as named by Ichabod, glowed with an otherworldly green sheen in the growing darkness of the palace halls. Once more, Ichabod treaded the corrupted corridors, following the root by tracing both branch and stem.

He went by way of the Hall of Stories, where the many deeds and adventures of God-King Angronius were inscribed and carved into solid stone. He came to that place too, often alone when he was young, and basked in the glorious telling therein. Like all of Angronius' children, he aspired to become a shadow of something his father had been. A warrior, a strategist, or a ruler. Ichabod realized soon enough that he would never be any of those three, but something far more insidious yet just as necessary. A slayer of daemons, in an Imperium that denies their existence.

It was far from a glorious calling, but it was something Ichabod was good at.

He glanced down at Usurper and brushed his fingers lightly across its fangs, feeling the faint negative pulse emanating from it that seemed to cut the fabric of realspace. Memories of the ritual of its making filled his mind. The Outcast crafted the sword from the ethereal flames of Minerva's forge, which burned without cease till the metal verged upon melting into slag. With its molten shape still glowing white-hot, he buried the blade into his second heart so that his cursed blood might fill it with the ever-burning fire of negation. Usurper would strike down both daemon and psyker, as Ichabod's touch and presence would sever their material coil.

The scar it left upon his body was like a birth-wound upon a mother who cut out her own child. The irony of it never ceased to put a smile on Ichabod's face. As for the mask he fashioned from the gold of false gods, it wasn't there for mere decoration. The mask allowed Ichabod to see sources of Warp bleed-out or witchcraft, as well as pinpointing weaknesses in his targets, much like a hunter's mask. It proved just as useful as Usurper when hunting daemons and cultists alike.

"Come, errant pup..." The voices taunted him, "Come closer... our roots run deep and grasp far. Not even your tiny blade could hope to cut us all down."

"Cut?" The Outcast muttered. "I only need to touch you and you'd be gone from this world."

Faces warped the walls, revealing trapped souls grasping and writhing in untold agony. They formed a many-faced golem of seemingly amorphous stone, still solid but swift like a running river. The daemon roared with the voices of a hundred men as it prepared to bring a malformed fist upon its prey, then shrieked in pain when Ichabod merely brushed the tips of his fingers across the beast's belly.

"Aha!" He said in amusement, then buried Usurper deep into the stone. Fissures brimming with green light formed into a treelike fracture from the wound. The daemon emitted another scream before crumbling into dust, clearing the path for the exile. It will never return, not with that kind of injury. Another daemon denied rebirth.

"Oh they never learn." Ichabod chuckled to himself.

"Yesss..." The voices retorted, "We do!"

Something was coming from the other end of the hall, and Ichabod squinted to get a better look. It seemed as though the floor was rolling in on itself like a wave gathering strength for the inevitable crash. When it seized up, the wave was shaped into the likeness of a gaping maw rowed with jagged stone teeth. Ichabod braced himself and extended his sword-arm as far as it would allow. His blade was poised to thrust into the daemonic thing, but never reached its mark.

A missile struck the monster right in its mouth, enveloping the corridor in a blast of searing flames. Stone and marble flew in all directions, and Ichabod flinched at the sudden explosion. He regarded the War Hounds bringing up the rear with annoyance, even more so when he spotted his half-brothers coming. Among them was the Sovereign, Sonjita. They weren't going to let him have all the glory of besting the traitors by himself, after all.

"You would fight these curs alone?" Mercer remarked, now wearing the crimson armor of House Thal'kyr. The armor had been Angronius' once. The breastplate had been a part of the God-King's original panoply when he led the rebellion against Old Nuceria, now it was a part of the Orcusian Dragon. The additional plating was of his own design, overlapping each other like the scales of a serpent and would brace hard against any blow.

"I would have, if you delayed any further." Ichabod replied. "But now that you're here..."

"Now that we're here, you'll stay clear of our line of fire and keep the anomalies from nipping at our flanks." Corso said.

"Do not mistake me as one of your legionnaires, Corso!" The Outcast snapped, "I am-"

"I do not mistake you as one, yet I know that your cursed blood repels them. This is not a command but a request, take it as you will but see my battle-brothers free from ambush. Will you do this?"

Ichabod grunted angrily but did as instructed. He was given a wide berth by the War Hounds, for he reeked of death. Together, they set out by direction of the Outcast towards the source of the corruption. Along the way they were met with all manner of abominations, things that were once men now irrevocably transformed into mishapen beasts. Just as Corso feared, most laid in wait under cover of shadows to set upon the legionnaires when their backs were turned. They, in turn, were set upon by Ichabod who dispatched them from both realities with the cold bite of Usurper.

Past the Hall of Stories was the Ruby Garden, an enclosure within the Exalted Palace that housed a great white tree with blood red leaves. It was a xeno plant, a gift from Angronius for his girls Xenobia and Janissa. It later turned out that the twins were more inclined to take lives rather than cultivate them, yet the tree and all the other plants in the garden remained tended with utmost care by the palace servants.

Now, the garden stood withered and in place of saplings were the impaled corpses of the faithful tenders. The tree itself was transformed into a portal, a wounded trunk that gushed forth a torrent of boiling crimson blood. From the pool that formed at its roots, daemons and abominable mutations rose from the mire with every passing moment. As though sensing the blood of Angronius from within the veins of the spacemarines, the fountain burst with renewed vigor and the palace quaked with the laughter of the Blood God.

This was the source Ichabod was seeking.

A champion, chosen by Chaos, rose up from the pool adorned in brass armor. This was the same armor gifted to the general Coriolanus, who fell at the Battle of Vendhayana. His regalia had been recovered by the Children of Mars and was gifted to their chosen, an ambitious warrior named Segovax of Hyrkan. His skin was red as a babe newly born, while his eyes were turned black from the daemons infesting his mortal vessel. His muscles bulged obscenely and the Warp gave him the stature of a Primarch. The trident symbol had been branded into his forehead, from which several horns now sprouted.

Segovax carried a giant halberd, the blade fashioned into crooked and serrated edge to imitate the jagged maws of the bloodletters following in his wake. He shrugged off the bolt shells striking him from all sides, and he retaliated by opening his mouth and covering the halls in warpfire.

When Sonjita's eyes fell upon him, they widened of their own accord with recognition. In months past, he was the man who attempted to take her life. He was changed now, but not too much that she would not recognize him. "It is he! I owe that one a debt of blood."

"That one is mine!" Mercer declared, rushing out of the formation to fight the champion one-on-one.

"Fucking idiot!" Corso bellowed, firing the last of his bolt-pistol's rounds before following his brother in. Some terminators lumbered over from the formation to cover their advance.

"I call to the Blood God to bring me the false king, yet he gives me you?" Segovax growled at Mercer and Corso, "I wish to fight the wolf, not his fledgling pups!"

"This pup's teeth are sharper than that little toothpick you carry, traitor!" Mercer retorted, bringing Maneater to bear. The chain-axe roared and chewed against the cursed halberd's blade, sending red sparks flying in all directions.

As for the bloodletters, they relished in the opportunity to fall upon the War Hounds and test their strength. From his throne beyond the veil, Khorne watched proudly as his favored harbinger's children delivered on his expectations. Though he thought himself far from it, Angronius served the Blood God in more ways than he could ever fathom. And in the case of his sons, they but provide glorious spectacle and bounty of blood.

Ichabod slid around the battlefield, killing scores of daemons and cultists to gain proper vantage point so he could see and cut the source of the daemonic portal. Segovax was protecting it, sending wave after wave of tittering sycophants to slog the advance of the War Hounds. Unfortunately, as adept as they were with killing men and xenos, astartes were far from skilled with the art of killing daemons.

At the very least, they provided ample distraction for the Outcast to set to work.

The Chaos champion moved with as much as speed as the two primaris, with twice the strength from his blasphemous union with the Warp. Mercer cut, bashed and stabbed at Segovax's exposed limbs, but every wound he inflicted scabbed over and disappeared within seconds. The champion would not fall, he found that out the hard way as his own wounds mounted.

"Fall, damn you, fall!" Corso roared, slashing at his face with his chain-sword. The teeth of the sword opened a gash across his cheeks, but they too closed up.

Segovax swore as the halberd was cut in two, broken in the middle by Sonjita's blade. While the demigods battled, the Red Maiden weaved through them deftly to lend aid to her sons. Her baleful glare burned against her assailant, and she quickly withdrew as his massive hands reached out to grab her throat. She noticed Ichabod's movements and set about to distract the champion long enough to see them to fruition.

Suddenly, Segovax felt the terrible abyssal aura that was Ichabod. The red pool at his ankles seized up like a living thing slowly succumbing to poison. The Outcast's blade, cutting deep against the roots of the tree and dipping into the pool itself, severed the anchor of the portal from the living world. The redness turned black and the pool became as tar, clinging to his heels and sapping him of his daemonic might.

With all the strength his arm could muster, Ichabod hurled his weapon at the champion and struck him at the back with Usurper. Segovax cried out, his voice becoming his own as the things living within him were silenced. Furious at being denied his kill, Mercer lifted his chain-axe and decapitated the traitor. Spitefully, he kicked the corpse to lie with the smoldering bodies of fallen daemons.

"His life was not yours to take!" He thundered against his half-brother.

Unfazed, Ichabod retrieved Usurper and stood atop the mound of bodies formed beneath the boughs of the ruby tree. "You sought the glory of battle, the very reason why I could not trust you to see the job done properly. You fought against daemons today, Mercer, not rebels and xenos. They are a threat cut above the rest, and must be taken with utmost caution- a fact that I wouldn't expect you to understand."

"There are no daemons, Ichabod. There are no gods." Corso declared, "Only the natural and the anomalous."

"Today we were a pack of fools, but if you truly believe that..." The Outcast said as he walked away, "You stand the biggest fool in the room."