Chapter 547: 4th & 10 (1/2)
I stand upon the blood sands
and see them blown
through doors left open.
Ajar, broken. Shattered.
The forges, cold and dark,
their wrath and hate gone.
By the end of their makers,
ruined, depleted
And in these empty halls,
where once sang
anvils and hammers
of wrath and hate,
There do I see it,
a single ember yet glowing.
The wind blows.
The glow spreads.
To fresh tinder, laid ready
And in the pop and crackle
of flames lit anew
I hear the silence whisper:
Behold Humanity
-stanzas 37-42 from ”The Sands of War” by Palvox, Telkan poet, as passed on by u/MuchoRed, Archivist of Second Precursor War Era Lore
Hesstla shuddered beneath the pounding of the guns. Atomic hammers went off, driving hate in the form of phasic 'enhancement charges' into the very soil. Particle bream, masers, lasers, entropic rays, anti-matter beams, sonic bursts, and much more tore into the ground, shredded the air, or reflected from the sky. Nanites fought an unyielding battle under the direction of an Elven High Queen against bioweapons from beyond space and time. Newly designed insane and Enraged warbois shrieked, gibbered, raved as they raced through Atrekna psionic computer systems. Kinetic kill weapons pounded the enemy, hammering the weapons of the Atrekna, and the Atrekna themselves, into wreckage and/or gobbets of dripping gore. Time itself shuddered and heaved, then was smoothed and soothed by Terran weaponry. At points people, much later, swore they saw the sun go black then reignite with a rage filled scream.
The Third Battle of Hesstla was in full rage when a Conclave of Atrekna moved through the forest, toward a short wide box-canyon midway up the slopes. The fighting had been going on for nearly fifteen hours, the Atrekna forced back step by step as the Confederate forces advanced with bloody boots and roaring weapons.
They had known of the building in the box canyon and the treasure within.
Over a hundred bright and shining points of intellect with the taste of youth that had already been spiced with terror and agony.
Behind the Atrekna moved war machines and bioweapons as the Atrekna headed up the mountain slopes. There was wreckage that the Atrekna paid no attention to. The screams of primate wrath still echoed off the rusting chassis, still audible to the Atrekna's senses. Shells of great slavespawn sat empty, the insides rotted away, the chitin still trembling with primate screams of all consuming fury. They were worthless the Atrekna, beyond the reach of their temporal mastery, now and forever more and eternally yesterday burnt by the howls of insane primates.
The Atrekna moved up steadily, through the mist that drifted through the forest. They neither knew nor cared what name the food gave to the larder ahead and so paid no attention to the sign they passed.
GENTLE HANDS ORPHANAGE
FILIAE FIDELIS DIGITAL OMNIMESSIAH
o(╥﹏╥)o (✿ ♥‿♥) (●´ω｀●)
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It had been built after the First Battle for Hesstla. When the Precursor Autonomous War Machines had arrived, before the Terrans and the Unified Council had gone to war. So early that the PAWM thought one Goliath could take a system.
A trio of junkers had been in the system, trading, when the Goliath had arrived.
They had fought it for hours, days, as the Corporate Security and Executor Military forces had stayed in the high orbitals and watched the three junker ships beat back the subcontinent sized unliving starship again and again.
All three had been severely damaged, on the ropes, with the Goliath and its attendants closing in for the final blow even as their machines ripped through the Unified Council ships to land on the planet, when Task Force Ruby Saber had arrived.
Task Force Ruby Saber and the battered junkers had ripped the guts out of the Goliath and its attendants. They were joined by two other ships, full of crazed and howling savages that somehow were still able to function well enough to pilot starships.
The First Battle of Hesstla took nearly two months. A full 6% of the population of Hesstla was killed. It ended with a battle between the Executor Forces and Task Force Ruby Saber and a garrison being put on Hesstla.
The Orphange had been placed in the box canyon, the only green left on the side of the mountains. The rest naught but smoking rubble and charred forests. Children who could do nothing but scream, who flinched away from the slightest touch, were brought there in hopes that they could be healed.
The months passed, and the children were cared for. Many of them heavily medicated to the point they could barely walk, others just rocked back and forth, some just wept endlessly.
The Second Battle of Hesstla was not the Precursor Autonomous War Machines, but rather the arrival of the Atrekna themselves for the first time.
The fighting was brutal. Harsh. Intense.
It was estimated that nearly a million Terran Confederate Armed Forces soldiers and Marines died on Hesstla, and nearly a thousand Telkan Marines.
At the end, the box canyon was still green. Flowers still grew on the bushes.
But the mountain slopes had been scoured. Smouldering rubble and charred forests were all that was left.
And more children came to the box canyon to be healed. They were cared for, as best as modern medical and psychiatric therapies could.
There were some injuries that nothing but time could heal, and even then it was not guaranteed that the scarring would leave anything behind but pain and agony.
The Elven Queen sent her children to heal the mountainside. To return the trees, the plants, and purify the streams and creeks, to return the insects and the birds.
Time passed. Not long, but enough that some of the children began to relax, to feel as if they were safe again.
Then the Atrekna came again.
But the box canyon and the slopes of the mountain were ignored. No Atrekna, no autonomous war machine, no bioweapon came for the children.
But the fear had been there.
The Mother Superior had soothed the children, reminding them that they were protected.
And they had hoped, over the years, that perhaps this time war would not find them.
But the Atrekna knew they were there and had saved those tasty morsels like the delicacies they were. They had planned on harvesting them last, once the system was subjugated, and devour the tender morsels they had denied themselves.
Now, however, the Atrekna planned on harvesting them. Their pain and terror would push the autonomous war machines further. Their fear and hopelessness would galvanize the more lethal and vicious of the slavespawn.
Their agony would be delicious to the Atrekna.
And so, the Atrekna moved through the forest, dimly lit by the dawn, until they reached the road that wound its way up to the box canyon. They could feel when they were spotted. Taste the fear and alarm.
Behind their feeding tentacles their mouths filled with saliva at the anticipation.
They held their slavespawn and autonomous war machines back.
They wanted to savor it.
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In the middle of the short, wide box canyon, accessible only via a narrow gap in the high cliffs less than fifty meters wide, sat a building. It was flanked on both sides by three smaller buildings per side. A garden was behind it, with gravestones beyond that. The smaller buildings were baroque, ornate, with heavy architecture, with weeping saints and angels. The smaller buildings were made of black stone, with frescos carved into them. The single doors had stained glass windows, and the doors were sealed with lead.
The building itself was massive. A heavy thing of brooding stone. Vines climbed in, the windows were narrow, and the edges of the roof were jagged and toothed. It had a single tower, with a balcony that encircled the top where the Mother Superior often walked and prayed.
Inside were nearly a thousand children. All of them traumatized by the wars. Several times a single grav-striker had dropped off children. The grav striker was unlike any others, and piloted by those who had given all to rescue children during that horrible second war.
But they, like the Mother Superior, continued their self-imposed dread task.
Deep within the building, at the rear, was a chapel. Large stained glass windows depicted miracles, the Digital Omnimessiah, and the Biological Apostles.
But they were not the middle window. The great window that had a row of crystal globes beneath it, each with a piece of plasma glass that burned with fire that never waned, each piece of glass sitting on a thick bed of red sand.
The great window depicted a Terran male, bloodied and obviously dying, in the arms of a young woman. In the forefront was a younger woman, almost a child, furiously tearing apart black mantids with her bare hands, her eyes set into the window with burning plasma glass. Beneath the window was the scroll, done in gold and etched with symbols of burning warsteel that simply read: ಥ_ಥ Ahtoesahn - Joan - Keyeshesurut ಥ_ಥ
Kneeling in front of the alter, the symbol of Lost Terra, with glass bowls holding shards of burning lossglass, was a massive figure. Its shoulders were as wide as two people and even kneeling they were nearly as tall as Mother Superior. Its head, covered by a rough burlap hood, was bowed before the altar and the great picture.
Two hands, clad in a stained gauntlet wrapped with warsteel barbed wire, rested on each side of hte crossguard of the engraved chainsword that was grounded point down into the stone.
The Mother Superior's heels clicked on the tile as she moved quickly to where the figure knelt. She curtsied, made the sign of the Holy Emoji and the Digital Starburst, and moved up to the figure, which had stayed behind after all the others of their kind had left with only one simple statement for explanation, spoken through another being who acted as a translator.
”It was here he revealed himself unto my only eye.”
The figure had not elaborated
”Enemies come, Show-Joe. The purple ones themselves. They want the children,” Mother Superior said.
The massive figure stood up, raising their face to the stained glass window. The Mother Superior saw tears track down the figure's face from the one eye that remained intact, the other covered with a piece of warsteel crudely riveted to the skull that was bare around it in a patch the size of a man's palm. The exposed bone was inlaid with pink warsteel and rose gold.
”It won't be long,” Mother Superior said.
The massive figure lifted its blade with both hands, holding it up to the altar and the stained glass window both.
”Neko,” the Mother Superior intoned, her soft voice loud in the silence of the chapel.
The motor coughed and sputtered, then roared to life. The lossglass beneath the largest portrait erupted in plumes of flame that roared to pink and white life. The engraving and the cruel barbed chain of the Mark One Cutting Bar began to glow and smoke.
The massive figure, dressed entirely in a burlap robe, turned around and knelt down on one knee in front of the Mother Superior. Their head was bowed as their hands moved, lifting the rumbling and growling chainsword to the Mother Superior.
The Mother Superior touched the figure's brow.
”Ex-Skootchi-Saw.”
She touched the figure's heart.
”Doki.”
She touched the figure's chainsword.
”Ick-Are-Ree.”
She touched the figures lips.
”Desu Kawaii.”
The figure stood up, hissing and thumping coming from inside the burlap robe. The Mother Superior's eartips, painted pink and white, only came up to mid-chest of the massive figure.
With thumping steps it moved slowly, stately, in elegant restraint, through the building. Small children, many of whom had never spoken since war had touched their minds, opened the door for the massive figure with the red burning eye. Sparks trailed after the figure, pink and white, as it moved with exaggerated care down the long hall and out the door.
It moved to the low wall that was less than two hundred paces from the front of the building, standing a moment in between the posts that marked the only gap in the wall. As the figure walked children streamed out from the building, to the three buildings on each side. A half dozen of each stood on either side of the doors in a line. At the end of the line a Hesstla female in a pink and white habit raised her face to the golden dawn and began to sing. The children sung with them, their voices clear and pure in the morning air.
The figure raised the chainsword as pink and white lightning began to growl and crackle around the hem of the figure's robe. The figure raised its face, the hood falling free, and bellowed out a single command.
”DOKI DOKI ̿̿’̿’̵͇̿̿=(•̪●)=/̵͇̿̿/’̿̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ WAAAAAARRRRGGGH! ̿̿’̿’̵͇̿̿=(•̪●)=/̵͇̿̿/’̿̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ KAWAII DESU!” the figure bellowed.
Six trails of lightning arced from her, bounding and leaping across the grass, each of them rippling and roaring to the doors of the tombs behind her.
For a long moment there was only silence as the children kept singing.
The doors clanked and rattled as they slowly opened, pulled on chains of bronze and copper and red iron all forged on the Anvils of Hate and in the Forges of Wrath.
From two of them stalked massive war machines. One was painted in pink and white, daubed all over, with graffiti and smiley faces daubed on it. The other was in dark green and gold, the sigil of the Imperium of Wrath upon it. Their armor was dented and savaged, but they moved with dreadful purpose as they thudded forward, their massive feet leaving deep impressions in the grass as they strode from their crypts and down the line of Hesstla children who threw flowers to them even as they sang hymns.
From the middle two on each side stomped massive figures in armor. All of them were without helmets, their faces gray and ravaged. Tubes and wires were drilling into their skulls, each had a tube up one nostril. Their armor was rent and torn, breached here and there.