Chapters Infernus Astartes: Ruinous Son
They yearned for one another.
The Old World and that Screaming Sea.
The Old World was, and always would be, a nexus of “great evil”; spawning threats throughout the coming millennia. It had been baptized in oceans worth of blood spilled countless wars, and perverted by vile, esoteric elements. It seemed as though the “dark half” of psionics and magic and metal lived and breathed in the very core of the world.
As for the Screaming Sea?
It was for all intents and purposes “Hell”. It was a realm of chaos, the amalgamation of nightmares and raw primal feeling, and other incomprehensible things. “They” rested there; ruinous Old Gods that grew stronger with seemingly every sin inflicted across 50 thousand dimensions with just as many universes in them.
The Old World and the Screaming Sea called out to each other, like soul-linked lovers wanting to embrace.
All that stood in their way was that accursed Eye.
The Baleful Eye was a tear in the dimensions; a rip in the fabric of reality and unreality. It was some twenty thousand light years across, a nexus where esoteric energy and real space-time coexisted. It had no definite origin, going backwards and forwards throughout creation. It gobbled up planets and corrupted everything its gaze rested upon.
The Old World had long broken free of its orbit, and was now on a one way trip towards the Eye, towards its unholy and equally depraved counterpart. In hours it would be swallowed up by the multicolored rip between the here and now.
The Old World wanted to be one with the Sea of Screams.
The Sea of Screams wanted to be one with the Old World.
They wanted to be together.
They yearned for each other.
The people of Immortus Imperia who rested upon the Old World didn’t desire such an unholy matrimony. Civil War had claimed the people during the later years of the Drift. Born from a fracture between the Elden Lord and one of his 8 sons, the “Everchosen of Ruinous Old Gods”, they waged a war that would someday break the world in two.
That war was coming to an end.
In hours the Old World would step beyond the veil that was the unblinking Eye, and become Daemon infested utopia like so many others the Chaotic Realm had courted. Such a thing was inevitable, but the Imperia would have to fall before they knelt to the Old Gods.
Stabbing his sword-mace into the ground, a soldier just looked down as the red at the end of his vision started to clear and his attention focused on the carpet made of corpses of brother and enemy alike. The ground is slick with blood and gore, the streets cracked and scarred so that the blood would leak into the wounds.
He looked… no different from any of them; he was equus, but his body was more of a minotaur; as such he had two legs, and two arms, only his tail was akin to a kirin. The blood splattered warrior had a mane and tail of natural sanguine red with strips of pale red, his fur was pale and his eyes were silver and slitted like that of a viper.
He had a name, but barely a handful would use it, and everyone else chose to just call him the Bloodforged.
The title being given for an obvious reason.
His origins were seeped deep in blood magic; he’d been born from it, just as the rest of the Bloodforged. It’s Taint ran through his veins, amplified and restrained by the biomechanical implants that filtered throughout his body. As a Magus and a Psyker, “power” was something he could tap into.
Taking that split second to catch his breath, the Bloodforged picked himself up and turned skyward, his attention drifting to the embers that fell like tree leaves in the fall. The heart of the Imperia; she was burning. After 53 years the Black Crusade was coming to an end, The Everchosen was standing victorious, and there was nothing that could be done about it.
‘How sickening.’ The Beast thought. As he looked ahead and pressed on, wandering the streets without much hurry or concern. In the distance he heard nothing, save the sounds left from a chorus of falling debris and distant weapons-fire.
His people were still fighting, trying to hold back the black tide.
He could do no different.
Breathing, the Bloodforged just walked on; his attention turning to the war torn city and falling embers, he watched as the city continued to burn, falling at the hands of the Black Tide. Imperia couldn’t hold this planet, but they sure as hell weren’t going to give it up without a fight.
“I can do no different.” The Beast muttered reaching down to lift a fallen weapon, a gravity hammer, with his left hand. Ahead he saw a guardsman make a valiant stand against a daemon horde only to be cut down by their overwhelming numbers. He narrowed his eyes. “As you lie blistered by the fires of Armageddon. ” He started to smash his weapons against each other, earning a resounding clang that seemed to catch the hordes attention. “As you walk in the valley that preys upon the weak. ” Another resounding clang. “May you stand unwavering. ” Another resounding clang. “May your soul be unbroken. ” Another clang. “So that when you fall, may Death herself mourn your loss. ” Another clang and the small army seemed to growl at him, fumes coming from their lips as he stared forward. “Until then may you rip and tear, until it is done. ” Reciting his old Chapter’s oath, Beast heard the daemons roar, a wall of wind slamming into him.
Intimidation fails.
He cracks his neck, impasse locked on his face as steps forward. His armored boots dig into the ground as they charge him; a virtual sea of enemies rising to crash down on him. He rolls his wrists. He charges, dodging and batting away daemon fire and missiles.
He collides like a runaway boulder.
Servants of Ruinous Gods channel but a portion of their masters rage and bloodlust. Claws and Armor meet. Blade and muscle collide. Rage meets battlelust. He bleeds, in turn he scars and tears through them like burning claws on flesh.
He does not see the end of the Horde, at the same time nor does he wish to see it; after all he hasn’t let the Beast out of its cage yet.
He is no - will not become a traitor in service of a mad god. He is a soldier of Imperia; bred in a tank, forged for nothing but war and death. He is clay and magic, steel and flesh. He was a weapon, and he had no regrets nor issues with what he was.
He has his purpose; fight for Imperia.
Fight the Black Tide.
Fight the Everchosen and his Lustful Bride.
Today Imperia burns.
As the Black Tide consumes the Imperia, those left on its surface display their true metal in their finest hour. Even as the Eye devours them, and the miasma of the Screaming Sea melded with the cursed soil they had grown up upon, did the people of a falling Imperia fight.
With claws and fangs, did they fight .
And they would continue to, till they broke or the Screaming Sea fell silent.
Infernus Astartes: Ruinous Son
The Screaming Sea, the Uneven Abyss.
Words can not describe this place.
Not the simplest, nor the most complex can begin to describe this wretched realm.
But they will have to do; for now.
Over countless Ages this place has been gifted a thousand names; the Fathomless Pit, the Nightmarish Abyss, and the Screaming Sea are but three.
This place; it hungers for creation itself, devouring the scattered universes that blanket uncounted realities. Long has it fed, trapping realms whose numbers eclipse the stars themselves. It is at its farthest depths where the Old Gods, lounging on Brazen Thrones as they feed on exploits of both their Chosen and their enemies alike, bringing ruin to a thousand worlds and realms beyond both space and time themselves.
They rule by proxy, whispering in the ears of their champions, who lead whole armada’s like young Gods. Death holds no meaning to them; such an inconvenience merely leads them to be born again.
To fight any that reach beyond this gilded prison is to grant a feeble and scarcely noticed resistance against the eternal horde.
And to know this and still so it to walk the thinning line between madness and valor.
That is a line the Bloodforged chooses to walk.
With a swing of his blade he sent the top half of a daemon towards the horizon, and moved on, taking seconds to breath as he wandered a world warped by Chaos. He breathed, stepped on a corpse, bloodied his greaves and moved on, all the while hoisting that sword-mace over his shoulder like it was a twig.
How long had it been? How long had he been wandering the Sea of Screams?
Honestly, he wasn’t even sure anymore.
“Time” ran differently here. It could be moved forwards, backwards and even stopped on a whim.
That was but one of the things he’d learned in his time here.
Another was the metaphysical layout of how the Uneven Abyss worked. It was constructed of thousands of assimilated universes, all twisted beyond recognition to what they once were. The Ruinous Gods divided the devoured realities and timelines amongst themselves, their unfathomable legions calling their dominions home.
He wandered but one, his will strong enough to tear a small maw into the fabric of the Screaming Sea.
He could walk through that, find the abominable worlds and carve a path through the unending horde.
He’d wander as far and as long as he needed to, so long as he found the Traitorous Firstborn, Harkan the Everchosen .
Still; thinking of the Traitorous Firstborn, the Bloodforged merely made a noise, almost like a snarl as he moved on.
To this day he remembered the final hour of the Everchosen’s Black Tide. He even remembered after that, the Eye overtaking him and the world he grew up on. Even then Imperia fought, tooth and nail, claw and fang, they fought .
He stood with stallions and mares he hadn’t known existed before.
He had charged with the remnants of broken Chapters.
Only when the last soldier fell did the war against the Everchosen and the Daemon horde end; and he was still standing.
Until he fell, he carried on the Imperia last battle. And he would not die until either the Everchosen was dead at his feet, or the Sea of Screams was no more.
“Teach them fear.”
Stopping The Bloodforged actually looked back, his attention turning to the winds as he heard the words. They were but a memory, the words whispered by a long dead brother. Still, he would do as requested. The Traitorous legions, the Everchosen, the Daemon Princes, even the Ruinous Gods would learn such a thing.
“Teach them fear.”
He was not the hero of this story. He was not the knight in shining armor who would get the mare after vanquishing the fabled “dragon”. He was the one who ravaged cities, broke worlds and devoured whole universes.
“Teach them fear.”
And he was the one that was going to burn this dimension to the ground.
His attention snapped up as he heard the screams, the sounds of the Daemon Horde as they materialized not too far from him.
He didn’t wait.
Before they could fully materialize in this plane he was on them. He grabbed onto their shoulders and tore them in half, sanguine and organ meat decorating the streets as he did so. Then he turned that mammoth sword-mace to chop one in half. One swung a blade and he grabbed it, his fingers punching straight through daemonforged metal before he twisted, breaking the blade in two. He followed by stabbing them with their own broken weapon then headbutting them so hard their skull deformed. Another punched him in the face and he barely flinched, just glaring back at them before shoving his fingers into their eyes and ripped off the front of their face. From a distance one started shooting esoteric energy at him and he dodged, grabbed another and used them as a shield. He promptly tore out their spine and threw them like a baseball.
Then he turned, used the spine as a bludgeoning weapon to kill another demon. The magic user - those he likes to call Priests- fired a bolt of lightning at him and he promptly threw his weapon at it, letting lightning dance across the weapon before it ripped through one of the Daemon’s arms. He dodged another daemon that tried to attack him; grabbed them by the throat and tossed them into the air, only to grab their leg and start using them as a living club. After he’d used that one to beat several to death he stepped on it crushing their chest and ripped their arm off. The priest was limping in the air and he just glanced at it, raised an arm and made a fist.
The Priest was promptly crushed into the size of a bit coin.
That done, he looked at the rest that were starting to attack him. Magic, missiles, psionics, swords, axes. They all came and the beast roared; power born of a fusion of magic and psionics dancing around him as a wave of scarlet lightning that pushed them all back and lacerated the streets. Space given, he reached behind him, a hole in subspace being born as he pulled something from it.
It turned out to be a three headed chaingun.
The sound that left those three heads could only be compared to an endless volley of shotgun shells fired at the speed of a sonic boom.
The Bloodforged mowed the horde down without a second thought. His three-headed chaingun glowing a crimson red as it started to heat up. Still he didn’t stop. He rammed the chaingun into a particularly far daemon’s gut as it continued to spin, shredding skin from muscle and bone as its payload tore itself out the daemon’s back and into the crowd. When it emptied he tossed it back, letting it reload itself in his subspace pocket as he pulled out his gravity hammer and crushed everything that got in his path.
He batted one’s head off their shoulders, he flattened another into paste. He launched one into orbit as they took the full force of the gravity drives shockwave. He made his way to his sword-mace and lifted it into the air letting it rest on his shoulder as he dual-wielded his two weapons.
Carnage filled the street and beyond; blood, organs, tattered flesh, crushed bone. He leveled the Daemon cities, and moved on.
He wasn’t stopping.
They came in tens, they came in hundreds, they came in thousands.
Still, he wasn’t stopping.
The Daemons couldn’t understand him; they couldn’t stop him - they couldn’t tempt him, let alone reason with him. He had no pity, no remorse, nor fear they could exploit. He didn’t talk back at them like many they had challenged again and again. He didn’t snarl as he cut them down. He didn’t yell, gloat, cackle, threaten or mock them for standing in his way. Day in and day out, without rest, without food, he wandered the gravelands of a thousand Daemon Worlds and sacked their temples. He would go on until nothing of their realm remained.
He was like that thing that was sealed within the darkest corners of Fathomless Pit..
“Teach them fear.”
And like it , they would learn to fear him.
Author's Note
Ok, here we are; welcome to Infernus Astartes revision Infernus Astartes: Ruinous Son. This is admittingly a variation I wanted to try working on. Especially considering how I initially wanted to portray Beast as least Ax-crazy and more focused on what he does.A. Either repeat Infernus Astartes and move him straight into the Age/dimension with Celestia and Luna in the canon timeline.B. Have him go Doom/Warhammer 40k on this. In which case you get a feel of all his toys and what the hell he can do.
Infernus Astartes: Ruinous Son
The seat of Daemon Prince.
A Nexus of unbridled power, one not unlike what the Old World once was. The Bloodforged just stared upward, looking at what he could only describe as the “tower” that rested in the distance of a volcanic nightmare.
For a split second he wondered what could call this place home.
The next second he told himself that this place would be brought to rubble, and by his own hands.
Stepping forward he moved across the hellish landscape. He breathed in scalding ash, and stepped over pools of scarlet stone. He heard the Horde in the distance, saw their fliers circling around.
They knew he was here. They knew he was coming.
Good.
His trusted sword-mace in one hand he spared it a glance, frowning as he noticed all the chips and wounds it carried. It would last, black adamantium would never raver but seeing the weapon like this pained him somewhat. This weapon had been with him since before he came to the Uneven Abyss. It was like an old friend, one that stood beside him even in the darkest of hours.
Still he knew he couldn’t heal it’s wounds.
Like it, he was a weapon, and a weapon can only cut and wound, it could not heal.
He pressed on, his attention turning to the armies of the Chosen that were waiting for him. He charged they fired everything they could throw at him. Missiles, magic, psionics, some even ordered the lava to strike him.
Not a damn thing hit him.
Dodge the missiles, keep running.
Dodge the magic, keep running.
Dodge Psionics, keep running.
Dodge the lava, keep running.
“Don’t stop.”
A voice echoed in his mind. Standing still for even a moment would spell disaster. He had to keep moving, cause he had a job to do. He’d be damned if they got in his way.
The glow on his blade returned as he got closer. The “artillery” stopped as he rammed into one driving his blade so deep into a daemon’s belly that it was reaching the hilt. He pushed; dragging the daemon through the crowd before abruptly tearing his blade from their body, spinning it in a full circle as that angry red light returned. He swung overhead, took off part of one’s skull. Another swung at him and his blade burned through their weapon. He grabbed the broken weapon before plunging half of it into the daemon’s face. Another wide swing and he cut out the entails of another let spill onto the floor.
He grabbed one of the Daemon’s gun/arms and pointed it at their face, in that moment an “oh shit” crossed his face he channeled his power through it, and forced it to blow its owners brains out. Someone grabbed his arm, trying to hold it still. He promptly twisted his grip, grabbed their arm and broke it. Bone, blood and meat breathed air for a split second before he used it to stab them in the throat.
His sword arm moved, cutting another daemon in half and before they hit the floor, he chopped off their head.
“Rip and Tear…”
Three grabbed hold of him, these pulsating sours on their body starting to glow before they exploded, and a scream ripped through the crowd as they did so. Another daemon rose into the air, lava gathering above their head before they dropped the torrent onto the smoking crater.
An ironclad hand shot out of the downpour, and the Bloodforged just pulled himself from the torrent of flesh melting lava. A layer of esoteric red danced around him as he did; his blade burned - screaming for sacrifice as he left the lava pool and reared back.
In an instant the daemon controlling the downpour was impaled, the blade going through their stomach as they dropped and the Bloodforged stepped forward looking at the crowd who were staring at the sight of him leaving molten lava. Whether that was amazement, fear or respect in their eyes he didn’t know. He didn’t care either.
He cracked his knuckles.
They screamed.
He watched the carnage. That was all the stranger could do. Stare from the top of a tower that wasn’t his and watch the Bloodforged wage a one stallion war against the army. “Your strength is admirable.” He muttered as they stared down at the carnage being laid to waste. “With it alone, you’ve survived much longer than any of your people. Brought legions to heel and razed countless temples to the ground.” He mused as he shook his head. “When will you’re war end though?” He asked. “Child of a dead millenium, how much longer will you wage your war?” They listened to a roar. “Will you wage it till you fall, or will you wage your war even beyond death?”
Red haze, is stepping in.
The Beast is clawing at its cage, wanting to be let out.
He’s close to letting it run loose.
It wants to tear heads and rip off limbs. It wants to cut and burn.
Kill. Maim. Burn. Rip and Tear. Kill. Maim. Burn.
Rip and Tear. Kill. Maim. Burn.
Rip and Tear. Kill. Maim. Burn. Rip and Tear.
Kill. Maim. Burn. Rip and Tear.
Kill. Maim. Burn. Rip and Tear. Kill. Maim. Burn.
Rip and Tear.
The words, the chanting writes itself across his brain. The blood rage and the battle lust grows. He breathes. It does not control him; he reminds himself. Charging, swinging his weapon, the Bloodforged breathes once more, focusing his gaze on the world of flying limbs and torn meat. He has no obligation to keep the Beast chained, but he needs to balance feral savagery with tempered focus.
He snaps a hand out, catching a daemonblade in his grip before taking it and the arm it was attached with a swing. He chopped its owner in three uneven pieces. He looked around noticing the dozens surrounding him as they attacked. Blades touched armor, failing to pierce it only do to the layer of energy that was radiating off it.
The Bloodforged roared.
Like a bomb had gone off, the energy around him exploded outward, pushing against everyone and everything that got in its way before being pulled back into its origin. The Bloodforged moved, and the world stopped.
The blood started flying, limbs were thrown into the air and meat caught flame. The sound of bones breaking sounded like the drums of war. The ground splits, the Uneven Abyss seems to scream out.
Rip and Tear.
Kill. Maim. Burn. Rip and Tear. Kill. Maim. Burn. Rip and Tear.
Kill. Maim. Burn. Rip and Tear. Kill. Maim. Burn.
Rip and Tear. Kill. Maim. Burn.
Rip and Tear.
He moves through the entire horde, clearing more than just a path as he makes his way through their ranks. He keeps going, going until everything in sight is reduced to rubble.
Stopping he stabbed his weapon into the ground and leaned against it as he caught his breath. He hacks up blood that boils the moment it touches the volcanic soil. He smells his own burning blood, tastes it on his tongue before getting back to his feet.
His body ached, but it was already healing
Not yet; he couldn’t collapse yet. He refused to collapse leaving a job undone.
Stepping forward he saw the true majesty of the tower staring ahead at him, gates as large as small mountains staring him down like a titan of old.
The great tower doors open, a new horde stepping out as they seemingly stared at the Bloodforged before them.
The Beast inside started tugging at its leash again.
Kill. Maim. Burn. Rip and Tear.
No matter how many minutes or hours or days it took, he would sack this great tower, and bring it’s master to their knees.