Old Places and New Faces.

It had been a very long week since the unbelievable fight between the Dark Marine and Pyre, the battlefield lay empty and scarred. The bodies of allies and the Khyr alike littered the ground, while the gore left behind by Pyre and his abilities had brought about all types of carrion devourers. Pyre simply sat quietly on the edge of the large crater which reared up from the ground, his new, black armor glistening with an eerie inner light. A foot remained pulled onto the lip, an arm wrapped around it while his other hung into the awkward crater.
Dex and Daemon quietly picked through the corpses, finding dog tags and the Battle Company Emblems to identify who and what had been lost. The arduous task had been going on for nearly an hour, and Daemon hadn't once even thought to ask Pyre, merely happy his friend was fully conscious for the first time in nearly six days. Both of the males, and the reptilian arachnid were still in battle armor, more than ready for something to happen, both of the men eager for a fight, the need to draw blood in repayment for the loss of their allies was a seldom indulged hunger, and Pyre was feeling it like an addict attempting to go cold turkey.
The rustling sounds of a cloak and the clank of armor had both men spinning, guns drawn and primed. Pyre's weapons, which still didn't quite have a concrete shape pulsed and hummed as he stared down the twin sights at the being standing amidst the armored corpses.
"Who are you?" Pyre's voice was still raw, the sound gravely and pained. His right eye pulsed with energy visible through his helmet as he stared and waited, and Daemon saw this. He attempted to silently hail the creatures comms, only to have it rejected, and then all three were addressed, even that eldritch spider chittering menacingly, that acidic venom hissing as it dripped from the lower mandibles.
"My name is Kynaera, and I'm not here to fight the Damned, but I am here to talk." The feminine voice echoed from the helmet speakers, her body shifting its weight to the side, orienting onto one foot as she gave equal attention and care to the three.
Pyre scoffed as Daemon and Dex' heads tilted slightly. " The Damned, that's our new name among the Brethren now? What, was the Forsaken not flashy or forbidding enough? Or is that copyrighted?"

Late Night on Valk-Orynthix

                The searing pain in his chest told him he was still alive. That thrice forsaken pulse of energy rushing through his mind, reminding him he was still but a mere human once more, body sapped of Energy and drained of that wondrously invigorating Pulse. His hand gripped at the dirt, his helmet was shattered, the chunks laying upon the ground, plexisteel and vantos weave, both still firm enough to remain in the contoured and specifically created shape, laying in ruins around him. He was regaining consciousness fast enough that he began checking and rechecking the systems of his suit and weapons.

                The H.U.D. flared, the last vestige of it had been linked to the cybernetic eye within his right socket, pulsing with energy that it siphoned from him. The warnings spoke loudly, demanding he fix the issues with the Atmospheric Systems and his Weapon Array, and restart the nanites within his form for a more proper biological reading. He was only able to do one of those things, the nanites quickly returning to work as he finally pushed himself to his knees. In that moment, that split second of utmost clarity, he came to the reality where he had been. His eyes widened as his head shot upwards, gaze locking upon that male standing smugly but a few feet away, canting forward, lips curled into the vestige of a smile, but oh, it wasn’t a smile, it was the most menacing grin anyone could manage. It showed nothing but malice, and plans interlaying plans, and satisfaction, that every one of those plans had come to fruition.

 “Oh, so you decide to pay attention now. I was afraid I’d have to kill her and just let you sleep like a baby.” The… Thing in front of him spoke like a human, but Pyre knew otherwise. The energy within him, though smoldering, unable to breath and live correctly yet, yearned towards what that thing, that insipid monstrosity, represented. He let that energy smother away as he glanced around rapidly, the full brevity of the moment crashed into the male then. His shotgun lay shattered and twisted before him, part of it crushed under The Dark Marine’s boot, while the closest person to himself, the only thing He’d been able to call Mother and Family in nearly a hundred years, was curled into a pile, blood dripping from her chest where a lengthy, wickedly curved blade jutted out like a middle-finger extended to the sky. The sound of wheezing, rasping breath echoed from Fae’s lips as she looked up weakly after a few moments. Pyre’s H.U.D. lit up as he looked at her, giving him a rapid reading of her, as well as the rest of his Khore. Everyone was very much intact, a few were hurt enough to worry. Pyre and Fae were both near about the same level, critical vitals and low energy, no shields, and both weapons destroyed.

                ‘Oh, could everything have gone better?’ the silent words scrawled across the bottom of his HUD in a message box titled ‘GRIMME’. Joking… It felt good. It sent a shiver through his spine feeling a fleeting, painfully enjoyable nostalgic emotion through his form, gripping at his soul for the briefest of moments. Pyre knew he would die here, but he wouldn’t let them die as well, though without his helmet and his energy array, he wouldn’t be able to order a full retreat. He hoped they knew what to do.

                The entire field was almost as silent as a graveyard, the only sound was the Dark Marine’s footsteps as he circled Pyre and Fae, hands squeezing at the knives practically sown to his sides, but he wanted them to bleed, just as he had been bled. He was going to enjoy every moment he had, and would dish it out to every one of Pyre’s thrice damned Forsaken Khore personally if he had to.

                Pyre’s map had gone silent, his H.U.D. quickly customizing to display only the needed information, errors popping up where his Shields, Ammo, Weapons and Map were, then combining into a single error symbol in the far upper-right corner of his HUD. He shifted himself up to his Knees, chest heaving slowly as he tried to regain some composure and energy, just enough that he wasn’t breathing like he had been beaten as badly as he had actually been beaten. Some modicum of Honor, the need to die with dignity, on his terms, rushed his brain, but he was unable to act upon it at that moment. His gaze flicked up to the Dark Marine, watching him like a trapped wolf would watch a hunter, waiting for something, for anything!  There! He saw it, the slightest shift of armor with every right step, the opening between the thick armored exoskeleton, revealing wiring harnesses and highly sensitive motors.

                “I’m tired… Pyre, You’ll excuse me if I don’t play with my food longer.”

                The words ripped Pyre out of his reverie, the plan disintegrating into thin air as he gazed up towards the Marine, his brow furrowing as he tried to figure out what he meant, only to watch as he circled near Fae. His massive gauntlet reached out, grabbing ahold of the armor upon the woman’s back, hoisting her up into the air and holding her there for all to see, especially Pyre, and his Khore. No one dared look away, but everyone was arguing for reasons to do so, fighting themselves as they tried to come up with some excuse to remove the spectacle from their sight. The all knew what was to happen. “Don’t blink. You’ll miss the fun.” The words were almost more than Pyre could stand, his form already preparing to throw itself onto his feet and lunge at the massive metal frame of the Marine. He stilled, though, muscles tensing for only a moment before they went limp as he watched the monstrous male grab the blade from the front of Fae’s suit and simply rip it out. “THIS is for her.” His words were slow, and he enjoyed watching the woman bleed through her suit, the thick dollops of energy-infused blood, heavy with the Pulse of the Eldest Ones, splattered onto the ground, tainting it and and sparking from contact with the air. Pyre watched in horror as his oldest friend, the one who Woke him from the Souls Reverie, was suddenly ripped from the Realms. The blade had been brought up slowly, pressed against her throat, digging into the mesh and metal weave dangerously, the thick barbs along the edge glistening with malicious intent. The movement was slow, he watched, unable to even move, or turn away. The drag of the blade in all its damnable infamy across Fae’s armor seemed to almost do nothing. Pyre knew better. Pyre knew the blade bit through the armor like paper, creating a near perfect cut through it. The next movement, that incision only enough to threaten Fae’s lifeblood, her vitals merely spiking for a moment as adrenaline began coursing through her form, The Dark Marine simply ripped his arm from one side to the other. The hellish bite of the blade was more torturous than the act itself. That violent tear through the armor was met with the soft flesh of the form beneath.

                Pyre saw it, and was horrified at it, The blood within her form squirted once, a thin line across the blade. Then it rushed from her form, pouring into and out of her armor, glistening and dancing with energy as it collided with the air, threatening to spark it all and send everything into a blaze of cataclysmic fire, but that blade worked even on that, sundering the energy from her blood and removing it as if it didn’t exist in the first place. “I told you.” The Dark Marine spoke as he simply let her form drop, slamming to the ground with a gut-wrenching slap. Pyre simply stared, his mind reeling and grasping at nothing as he tried to consider the situation, understand what had just happened. The sounds of his HUD going off in his mind made him acutely aware he was watching exactly what he knew he was. The quickly fading pulse of life and the blaring sounds that told him to react and save her were lost upon him, though. His body collapsed forward, eyes slamming shut as he smashed his fists, wrapped in thick gauntlets, into the ground, denting the stone with the sheer force of the movement. His stomach began to boil, his mind reeling as he fought with the knowledge it was real. He screamed within his mind until his vision shook. His mental voice echoed through his mind until he knew not what to do once more. He grasped at everything he could, trying to make sense of the moment. His right hand slammed back into the dirt, rearing back again, joined by his other, to smash into the rocks again. That eldritch Pulse within him grasped at that rage, the loneliness and the pain. It caught all of it and gulped it all down like a man dying of dehydration when presented with a water bottle.  It feasted on his pain and his anger, his sorrow and rage, especially the sudden spike of hatred aimed at himself. ‘YOURS ITS YOUR FAULT. YOU DID THIS BECAUSE YOU ARE WEAK’ His mind aimed at itself as it roared in pain, lashing out at anything and everything. Pyre’s form fell to the side, curling around itself, hands gripping at his own head as he suddenly let out a scream. The sound peeled through the air like knives upon a chalk board.

                A Sudden change enveloped Pyre, an almost audible snap of control and loss of responsiveness. Every display within the Khore, and every one watching from hidden ridges and rocks saw the Male’s vitals dip, and then fade. No one within the Khore responded, every one of them simply staring on, gaze affixed at the three bodies in the midst of a large crater upon the battlefield. Moments later the battle was continued as it had been before, though without an immediate response from the Khore. Every head, human and otherwise, ducked behind rocks and into small caves, hunkering down. A few seconds in they began to return fire, figuring they’d do their best to live up to Pyre’s constant motto, Die on your Own Terms. Plasma bolts and laser fire began to ring out through the valley-like area, the occasional whine of a railgun powering up only to send a stake of titanium or some magnetic-polymer mesh through a wall or outcropping, pinning an enemy to the wall in a gruesome showing of determination. Occasionally the target was still alive, thrashing is clawed hands and multi-functional limbs around, smashing into its own allies as it tried to get off of the wall.

Within moments the flow of battle began to sway, tilting slowly, favoring one side, as many soon did. In this case sheer numbers and poor entrenchment forced them to fall back to a small cave whose outcroppings made decent enough barricades and places to hunker behind while returning fire whenever they could. Even so the Khore was beginning to take damage, plasma rounds began to roll off of shields, melting the face of the armor beneath and irradiating the air for a moment. Concentrated blasts of lasers were boiling through rocks, splattering molten debris in wide arcs. Soon enough what was merely a somber exchange became a grim, tooth-and-nail battle of attrition.

The exchanges continued on as the Dark Marine simply relaxed upon a rock nearby the corpses below him. He watched them both with a look of almost orgasmic bliss, as if in the throes of passion. He merely shook his head at the situation, hoisting himself off of the rock. His boots crunched across the dirt and the remains of armor and weapons strewn nearby. The Khore had originally held this position as a defensive point, a small rapidly constructed bunker of plexisteel and Vorshian Shielding had been pressed into the spot like a thumbtack. Yet the Marine had sundered it personally, killing everything within save the two he wished to toy with. Now his playtime was over, his form twisting on the spot to saunter off slowly. The Khore’s gazes flicked one final time down to the crater, watching the massive hulking exoskeleton climb the ridge and simply leave them to their fates.

However, they saw it. Every HUD in the vicinity lit up, warning of an ‘Aggressive Life-form Detected.’ Every head craned down towards the Crater as it was suddenly engulfed in pitch black energy, thick bolts of electricity, brilliant enough to both blind and sear itself upon an onlooker’s vision, peeled from the heart of the crater, shooting out to arc across the scattered hunks of metal. Many of the Khyr’Tan, simply ignored it, shrugging the cataclysmic storm within the crater off as something from The Dark Marine. The first of the foolish creatures to fire off a round was struck with a bolt of thick energy, it and the area behind it were vaporized for a short distance, the energy dispersing in a short cone behind the point of impact, though the blast was enough that the debris would force several more out of commission.  A second bolt careened from the heart of the crater, speeding towards the Marine’s form though missing by only a foot, blasting a thick hole in the far wall of the valley. “I’M NOT FINISHED WITH YOU.” The voice that roared out from within the crater was beyond human, the tones and words held some sort of eldritch perversity about them, tainted with malefic intent, yet so very familiar at the same time. The maelstrom began to withdraw into the massive dent in the ground, almost literally inhaled by the being standing there. Familiar chunks of armor were there, patches and insignias that marked it as Pyre’s armor were visible, but the helmet had been remade, the draconian shapes were far more tainted than before. The stylized horns thicker, holding a more Demonic, than angelic, presence about them, while the eyes of the helmet blazed with black-fire. The armor was far from whole, thick, tattered holes radiating a black energy much like flames or liquid metal, the shadows behind him condensing, seemingly liquidizing as they began to take the shape of wings and a tail, both caught between demonic and draconian shapes.

For the briefest of moments the Male’s hands held nothing, and a split second later thick black tendrils shot out of his hands, slamming into the ground around both Pyre’s and Fae’s armaments, thin, vine-like tendrils slipped from it to stab into each piece of the metal, as well as all those nearby and even the bones of fallen allies and enemies. The merest moment passed, every Khyr’Tan quickly turning to unload their full attention onto the creature so brazenly uncovered. Each shot hit its mark, slamming into the body and piercing through it, leaving a momentary hole which rapidly healed over, filling with fire, as if the air was caught aflame, only to liquidize, becoming rather metallic in sight. A long moment of stillness from that walking monstrosity, only to have it shattered as the tendrils ripped the metal and bones from the ground, the twin masses of metal and shattered armament combining in mid-air until there were two vaguely handgun shaped masses of bones and metal, energy coursing through each separate piece and lighting up the area with radiant darkness and devouring light. The twin weapons flared and pulsed with life and need and want, and a moment later they were brought to bear against those whom had fired upon him. Both began to expunge gouts of energy, releasing thick, hefty bullets, coated in vibrant flames. They seemed to lack even the slightest of cares as far as accuracy went. Ever shot hit something, though, slamming into rocks, only to explode in a sphere of fire which burned for a visible moment before disappearing into smoking nothingness. The ones that collided with one of the insectile creatures elicited a screaming rebuttal, its body engulfed in flames only to have its entirety ripped into itself, leaving only a thick, gooey sphere floating in the air, a moment later gravity remembered it was supposed to affect it, and a thick splat had that orb bounce across the floor, leaving a trail of some gods forsaken ooze.

That Behemoth of Metal and Flames continued its vengeance, fueled by rage and lust for blood. Eager to meet out every round fired at it with a barrage of its own, the being happy to oblige their foolish want to rush into the Æther Beyond!