The entire Resistance plaza was submerged in a brief, profound silence. Under the gaze of the assembled multitude, Sevatar and the Company Captain advanced to the weapons rack at the periphery — a comprehensive display of recently-manufactured armaments, including those calibrated for transhuman employment.
Sevatar's regard traversed the selection with fastidious deliberation. His gaze finally settledupon an adamantium glaive. Its formidable mass and extension would, previously, have been inconceivable for him to wield. Now, he elevated it with effortless facility.
"Nyx. What is your assessment — who shall prevail?"
"Who shall prevail? ...Though Sevatar is indubitably gifted, the Captain is a veteran."
"Curze. Surely you do not genuinely entertain the proposition that the Captain might be defeated by a neophyte?"
Curze maintained his customary taciturnity. His countenance, however, radiated absolute certitude regarding his get's imminent victory.
Nyx deprecated this filial partisanship with a resigned cephalic oscillation. Having verified that the Captain had likewise selected his armament, he formally inaugurated the duel.
Upon commencement, neither combatant immediately committed to offensive action. Each awaited the exposition of the other's tactical deficiencies.
The atmosphere condensed. Their gazes interlocked. Both warriors registered the atavistic impulse kindling in their thoracic cavities — not the characteristic genetic affliction of Nostraman stock, but the quintessential warrior's aspiration to triumph.
(Nyx entertained a supplementary hypothesis: that the Chaos Gods were, perhaps, covertly observing Nostramo, thereby amplifying the inhabitants' pre-existing sanguinary propensities. He could not, however, adduce definitive evidence in support of this conjecture.)
The impasse was shattered by Sevatar.
His inferior extremities propelled him forward. His silhouette attenuated, dissolving into the ambient shadow with increasing definition. This was the combat-instinct encoded within his appropriated genetic inheritance — intuitively, he had identified the tactical modality optimal for his configuration.
"Exemplary assassin's technique..."
Nyx's approbation was involuntary. Sevatar's aptitude had substantially exceeded his projections. The youth had, within half a diurnal cycle of his apotheosis, already achieved rudimentary mastery of his inherited capabilities.
The VIII Legion, the Night Lords, were pre-eminent among the Legiones Astartes in the propagation of terror and the art of the covert termination. Their warriors were shadows given transhuman form, darkness rendered animate.
SHRIEK——!
The chain-blade of the Captain's weapon screamed as its teeth accelerated. He remained motionless, awaiting his adversary's assault. He ground his armament against the lithic substratum; fulgent sparks erupted from the point of contact, illuminating the immediate vicinity.
Found you.
He pivoted. His blade arced in a devastatingrearward stroke.
CLANG——!
Chain-blade and adamantium glaive collided. An invisible shockwave propagatedinstantaneously through the atmosphere, displacing all particulate matter within its radius.
Such puissance... As expected of that... equerry.
Sevatar had, in this initial exchange, been placed at a decisive disadvantage. His glaive had nearly been dislodged from his grasp.
His combat-morale, however, remained undiminished. His entire sensorium ignited.
CLANG! CLANG!
Two additional ferocious exchanges.
From the precipice of disarming to parity — Sevatar had required precisely threeoffensive-defensive transitions.
He was acclimating to this puissance. In real time.
Exclamations of astonishment erupted from the congregated spectators. Their recent training regimens had afforded them a comprehensive appreciation of the Captain's transcendent martial capabilities. That an adversary could not only withstand his assaults but progressively adapt to his velocity and momentum was, to their cognition, incomprehensible.
"It appears Sevatar possesses a credible prospect of victory!"
Observing the protracted equilibrium upon the duelling ground, Curze resumed his filial encomia.
"Indeed?"
"You also registered it — the Captain...!"
At the epicentre of contention, the Captain's affect underwent sudden, dramatictransformation. He had received instructionfrom the Space King.
Permission to prolong this engagement had been withdrawn.
"Praise... Praise be—!"
"THE GREAT SPACE KING!* "*
His already-formidable musculature distendedwith augmented puissance. Sevatar was instantaneously suppressed. The equilibrium was shattered.
BOOM!
The substratum fractured beneath the Captain's ascendant stroke. Sevatar was propelled into a newly-excavated crater.
He had, however, evacuated the point of impact at the terminal instant. The Captain's blade had breached only his afterimage.
Hah... Hah...
Sevatar's respiratory apparatus laboured. The Captain's abrupt augmentation had nearlyconcluded the engagement. Only his premonitory faculty — activated at the critical moment — had averted immediate defeat.
Prophecy. The innate talent of the Night Lords. It was rumoured that true prophetic capacity was Curze's exclusive inheritance; the Legiones Astartes shadow-mantle was, perhaps, more properly characteristic of the Raven Guard.
"Come... Continue."
The Captain crooked his index digit in Sevatar's direction. His entire corporeal configuration radiated combustiveanticipation. The preceding exchange had, for him, constituted calisthenic preparation — collisions of this calibre were, for an Astartes, quotidian.
Sevatar's palm traversed the shaft of his glaive. He acknowledged, with comprehensive clarity, that he could not match the Captain in protracted attritional engagement.
His silhouette receded into shadow. This time, his integration with the darkness was complete. The Captain could not detectSevatar's respiration, his cardiac rhythm — even the subauditory susurrus of his transhuman locomotion had been extinguished.
From the umbra, Sevatar descended upon the Captain.
CLANG!
The Captain's preternatural combat-sense intercepted the assault at the terminal instant. Thereafter, Sevatar's offensive cascaded upon him with the relentless velocity of orogenic precipitation. His glaive probed every district of the Captain's corporeal perimeter; the Captain's chain-blade weaved an impenetrable defensive tessellation.
Their velocities accelerated. Their engagement transcended the perceptual thresholds of the congregated mortals. To their spectator-cognition, only evanescent afterimages — colliding, diverging, re-encountering — remained apprehensible.
The duel intensified. Shockwaves of increasing amplitude propagated from each glaive-blade collision. The substratum trembled. The assembled rebels waveredupon their unstable perches.
They exhibited no inclination to withdraw.
Resistance Combatants: To witness such visceral, somatic conflict — even should this engagement conclude our individual existential trajectories — the transactionremains favourable!
Though his sanguinary-spectatorial constituency evinced no apprehension regarding collateral corporeal compromise, Nyx could not, in good conscience, countenance their immolation.
Magnetic field rotation: 50,000 horsepower!
His palm projected an invisible field of force, containing all collateral phenomena within a circumscribed perimeter.
This intervention attracted a sidelong regardfrom Curze.
"How find you this sensation, neophyte?"
"Exhilarating... This engagement — my very sanguineous fluid ignites! "
The conflict between Sevatar and the Captain escalated. Their combustive martial impetus pierced the curtain of reality.
An entity of perpetual, avid observation stirred.
WAUGH! This is precisely the spectacle I crave!
Though this particular martial exhibition was not formally consecrated to his worship, the entity enthroned upon the Brass Repositorynevertheless experienced a profound elevation of affective state.
The pre-eminent champions of a Primarch'simmediate retinue — such conflict yields unparalleled gratification. Should Nyx and Curze themselves descend into reciprocal annihilation, I should surely experience orgasmic transcendence!
Entertaining this phantasm, the entity — Khorne — experienced no recalcitrance whatsoever regarding the appropriation of conventional transactional protocol.
He prepared to confer his blessing upon the two anchors of his sanguinary regard.
888 — The encomium of the pre-eminentsibling of the Warp's Pantheon — ruptured the curtain of reality and descended upon the two warriors.
"OH?!"
The instant Khorne's beneficence manifested, the corona of faith behind Nyx's cranium activated with autonomous, immediatealacrity.
He had, recently, achieved proficiency in the volitional suppression of this aureole — he had urgently required uninterruptedsomnolent recuperation. He had not anticipated that the Ruinstorm would re-initiate its importunate solicitations within less than a full diurnal cycle.
VACANTUS DOMESTICUS! You dare abscond with my property?!
The corona's puissance coalesced with his electromagnetic field. The golden fulgurations scintillating between his phalanges attained an incandescent, purified chromatic register.
Sacred flame erupted with unrestrainedferocity.
Magnetic field rotation: 100,000 horsepower!
His invisible field of force was instantaneouslysuffused with sanctified, albefied radiance. Pyroclastic immolation coalesced from the void, intercepting the Warp's unlawfulordnance in mid-trajectory.
Nyx would, under optimal circumstances, have immediately denominated this interdiction as 'SECOND CHILD, YOU ARE APPREHENDED ENGAGING IN PROSCRIBED COMMERCIAL ACTIVITIES'.