Warhammer 40K: Sumus Damnatus

[Kuja]

More 40k fanfic. This time Legion of the Damned. Because I was craving some undead paladins.

reading music

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WARHAMMER 40,000
Sumus Damnatus

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We are the Damned.

It is a matter neither grandiose nor dramatic.

We were once mortal. Then we became immortal. Now we are Damned.

It is an unavoidable truth.

We are not damned in the manner a condemned criminal is damned as he awaits the headman's blade.

We are not damned in the manner of a sick man awaiting his black end.

We are not damned in the manner of a man whose body catches between great, turning gears.

We are not even damned in the way those would would consort with darkness are damned.

We are the Damned.

To be Damned is to know an existence of pain.

This is not to say that it is marked by pain. This is not to say that there is fear of pain.

A weak man fears pain. A strong man welcomes pain. The strongest man can endure much pain.

But to be Damned is to know an eternity of pain. To be Damned is to leave behind the memories of peace, for the Damned are not granted so much as a moment of it.

To be Damned is to feel the crackle of hellfire within our bodies.

It burns everlasting. It cracks skin and blackens bone. It fills our veins and crackles, searing, in the lungs. The gifts of the immortals stave it off, but to be Damned is to know that one day it shall consume us, even as it consumes us now.

To be Damned is to feel the immensity of the scorching heat in the air about you. All around our armored bodies the heat makes air waver and distort. The Damned are accompanied at all times by the scent of superheated steel and roasting, cooking flesh.

That is what it is to be Damned.

To feel the fire burn in your gut and to wait, day by day, until it spews forth and consumes you.

But the Damned cannot wait for that day. Our fate is known. We live with it hour to hour. There is no need for lamentation. There is only acceptance. Acceptance. Endurance. And purpose.

Even Damned, we shall not shirk our purpose.

The world shrieks and groans. It tumbles about on its axis and rattles us within it.

The Damned are silent.

We emerge into a haze of dull red dust. Our tread is slow and sure. The Damned have no need to rush.

We move in no ordered formation. There are no shouts to rally. Only the slow, biting sound of great steel boots shuffling upon the bare dirt beneath.

We begin to clear the dust cloud, and we stride out into the open. Behind us, the drop pods burn.

There are screams. There is the sound of metal on metal. Flesh tears. Blood spews forth. Energy crackles.

The Damned cross from one hell into another.

Mortals clash with immortals. Uniformed men die in droves to the great blades and mighty guns weilded by their foes. Some of them shout orders. Some of them merely shout. Some of them are brave. Brave mortals. Brave fools.

One of the Damned pauses in his slow tread and lifts his boltgun to his shoulder. The massive weapon gleams in the sunlight, stripped of its paint and polished to a shine by the ever-present hell of its owner's body. He fires, rocking back on his heels as the bolt round explodes from the barrel.

It punches into the body of one immortal and he erupts in a firey cataclysm of burning flesh and shearing steel.

His comrades react. Return fire seeks us. Bolt rounds fly through the air. Some of them flash through our ranks, and we can see the smoke trails left by their passing. Sometimes they glance from the bodies of the Damned, exploding with diabolical force. The Damned put our heads down and we walk through them as a mortal man might walk through a heavy rain.

The immortals are discomfited by the sight, and they are slow to react. Their bodies are garbed in great baroque armor not unlike our own, helmets horned and pauldrons adorned with great spikes. They believed themselves unmatched in fearsomeness. A legion of black hearts and black intention.

They style themselves daemons.

But now they look upon the Damned.

And they know fear.

Our march continues unabated as we close with them. Between us, the mortals, the men in uniforms cry out in fear to look upon us. They see our bodies, armored in black. They see the fire- and death-motifs the Damned have placed upon our wargear in lieu of heraldry.

Once, as mortals, as immortals, we had names even as they. We had titles, even as they.

But the Damned have no need for names. The Damned have no need for glorious recognition.

For the Damned, there is only Death, and Death is our face.

The mortals break. The immortals do not. They who style themselves as daemons turn to face us. They charge to meet us, chanting damnation to an enthroned deity.

Their battlecries fall upon uncaring ears. The Damned draw our blades and meet them, face to face. As steel begins to scream and the sount of boltguns rises upon the air, the hellfire begins to rage within us. It feels death and pain and bloodlust, and there is so much of it.

One of the Damned erupts in flame, tongues of it curling from his armor plate. Another follows suit, and then another as the hellfire rises to a fever pitch.

Two men fight blade to blade. The dust about their feet grows black with the scorching energy given off by the clash of power weapons. In mirrored image, they strike one another through the chest. The dark one screams. The Damned does not. He feels no pain. What is the pain of a power blade, when one's body writhes in hellfire with every waking moment?

One of the dark ones comes for me. I heft my botgun and take aim as he draws near.

As he reaches me, I fire. He is so close that the superheated bolt round punches through his breastplate and erupts from his back, leaving a charred hole behind. It flies onwards, and another of the daemon creatures falls prey to its explosive power. My attacker stumbles before me, and I lower my weapon, pointing the barrel towards the visor of his helm. My next round removes that helm and all within it.

One of us, to my left, carries the great bulk of a multi-melta. He holds the trigger down, and our foes vanish beneath thousands of degrees of liquid flame. The flickering light of the weapon and its touch illuminates his helm, his bone-white visor marked by grinning teeth and glinting rubied eyes.

One of us falls amidst the battle. Two bolt rounds strike his midsection and he stumbles backwards. A third explodes against the winged skull before he can recover, and then a fourth takes him in the neck. The Damned topples in a fiery cascade of shredding armor and sloughing flesh. He sprawls upon his back, and the hellfire burns hotly before receding, leaving behind a blackened, smoking shell.

There is no protest. There is no denial. One of the Damned has met inevitable fate. His pain is over.

There is no rejoicing. One day we will all share in this fate.

The Black Legion attempts to rally. A harsh, grinding roar rolls over the battlefield. There is a pounding sound like a smith's hammer striking at the anvil, magnified many times over and repeated again and again. A massive figure comes tearing through the ranks of the servants of daemons to get at us. An armored creature that bears no resemblance to the mortal, to the immortal it once was.

The dreadnought fires an assault cannon. Hard-nosed rounds glance from burning ceramite armor and punch through the bodies of the Damned. A few stumble.

The spray of gunfire is undiscerning in its lethality. The maddened creature cuts down members of its own in its barrage.

From the ranks of the Damned steps forth one who bears a great weapon upon one shoulder. The barrel of the rocket launcher is shaped to resembled a great skull, the bulk of its body a massive ribcage.

With a whoosh of air and a roar of flame, the Damned lurches backwards as he fires. The missile leaves behind a trail of thick, black smoke as it streaks through the ranks to find its prey. It strikes the dreadnought upon its face with such force that it melts into the armored plates.

The bulky creature erupts in a massive explosion that cracks its adamantine shell like an egg. Shrapnel sprays the battlefield for many meters about as the engine of destruction collapses.

The Damned march onwards. At times, our armored tread crushes the bodies of the Chaos marines that are quick to fall and slow to die.

The survivors retreat before us. Some attempt to use the craggy rocks of the battlefield plain for cover. It is of no use - wreathed in hellfire, the boltguns and heavy weapons carried by the Damned melt through the paltry stone to find those who lurk in waiting.

Our slow march carries us from one side of the field to the other. In the span of a few minutes, the attack carried out by the servants of Chaos has collapsed entirely, leaving behind only the wreckage of the fighting that has engulfed all in sight.

Fire and blood cover the horizon. The mortals have long since fled. There is no room for men amidst such a war. It is not battle. It is catastrophe. It is apocalypse.

It is a place fit only for the Damned.

Corpses little the ground. Corpses of mortal men. Corpses of devil-marines. There is the occasional burnt remains of the Damned amongst them.

And there is more than this. Amidst the tumult of wreckage are the corpses of angels.

Angels, not unlike the immortals that we had been before we were Damned.

They wear the silvered armor and great cross of the Iron Knights chapter. We find them upon a ridge of stone. They must have held this strongpoint for a great deal of time, judging by the corpses of both sides that cover the ground.

It is only here that the Damned hesitate. The Iron Knights will want to take back their own, if any of their force still lives. But there is a matter to attend to.

One of the Damned steps forth, and from a box of ebon steel he withdraws a great, grinning skull. Holding it in his hand he moves to stand above one of the Iron Knights, pausing for several moments before moving on to the next. He repeats this process several times.

The rest of us watch in silence.

Eventually, he comes to one armored battle brother slumped against the tracks of a land raider. This time, he does not move away, but rather bends to couch over the Iron Knight's still form. Several of us ring the scene, and wait to see the outcome.

Deep within the dark recesses of the skull's eye sockets, a flame begins to burn, growing to illuminate the whole of the relic.

There is life in the Iron Knight. Barely.

As the skull glows with living flame, he lifts his head by the most minute of fractions, like a man slowly waking from the deepest sleep.

In finer circumstances, he might be found and exalted by his chapter. Given champion's laurels. Placed within the belly of a dreadnought to become one of the venerated brothers of the chapter.

Instead, the power of the skull brings him to wakefulness in the presence of the Damned.

The one that holds the skull draws it back and stands. We tower over the Iron Knight's prone form. Lowering the skull to his side, the one that holds the relic offers his empty hand. A voice like the grinding of immense gears speaks aloud.

"For the Emperor, beyond the point of Death."

There is silence in the wake of the declaration. One of us tightens his grip upon his blade, but the one with the relic steadfastly keeps his gaze upon that of the prone space marine.

There is the sound of drawing breath, the gasp of a dying man. And in a ragged voice, comes forth a response.

"Even in Death...I still serve," the Iron Knight replies, and with terrible effort, he lifts a shaking hand to reach for the outstreched gauntlet.

As he does so there is a sigh, and a thread of the hellfire that burns within us softly crackles from our champion's grille to skitter up to the lip of his pauldron and from there down the length of his arm like a winding snake. It reaches his fingertips and from there leaps forth to curl around the Iron Knight's own gauntlet. There is a growl of pain as it flashes across his silvered armor, leaving blackened steel in its wake.

The crackling flame sinks into the speaker grille of the prone marine's helm and he trembles. A haze of superheated air begins to form about him as, with a sudden lurch he sits up just enough to close his fingers about the wrist of the proffered arm.

He is hauled to his feet, and the sound of his breath is loud and agonized as it escapes his helm. Despite that, he stands tall and squares himself, boltgun clasped securely in his armored hands.

The skull is placed once more within its ebon box.

We leave, our march slow and purposeful.

The Iron Knight comes with us. Soon he will erase the great cross of his chapter, omit the company and squad markings that denote his identity.

He is who he was, no longer.

Like us, he is now Damned.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Awesome.