《B R I C K》Chapter 9: Forty seventh attempt
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Screams, shrieks. War cries. They were incessant.
A quirk of the Enemy, this One notes.
When faced with the one’s dubbed Enemy and Invader, the Guardsmen shored their forts, held their lines, and raised their flags. Their banners of war.
Their banner of three plates. Strength, Faith and Will. The banner of the Imperium of Deus.
The Sentinels stood silent, stalwart up high upon the battlement, juxtaposed against the unruly formations of the Enemy, barely kept together with the pulse of war drums maintained by the Enemy Standard Bearers. Though, it was tough to propose whether there was even a standard.
This One would rather bank on the Enemy simply being wild beasts shoved to the frontlines than intelligent folk.
The Enemy marched onto Imperial land, counted at exactly thirty thousand four hundred and sixteen men, but it was an ill fated endeavour. Doomed for failure since its inception. But still the Enemy marched forth as they had done for the forty six times prior, and yet again their ranks were met with the same cold steel they tasted for those same forty six times.
Bringing more Invaders would not change an incontrovertible outcome.
Blood dyed the scorched earth vermillion for the umpteenth time as the Enemy raced forward, siege ladders at the ready and siege towers not far behind. They were propped, hooked onto the outer Wall. Many were kicked and batted away, murder holes were made full use of on any Enemy close enough. Bricks and Oil making for the bulk of these kills.
However, it was inevitable that some of the many siege towers stuck and the red headed Invaders swarmed in.
And like the repetition of history, the Enemy fell unto the force of the Psykers.
Their bodies would be rent and torn, ripped apart by the imperceivable psionic force. Such was the power of the Psykers. No doubt, it would take those unskilled hundreds of years to simply feel their exquisite power.
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But… Something was different. The Psykers… instead of massacring the Invaders, in a macabre fashion they cried and howled not unlike the weeping of hellspawn as they bled the scarlet of the Enemy. They wept as their skin sloughed, refusing to hold their innards any longer.
It was sudden, and like a plague all the Psykers perished, followed by the Sentinels that mounted the battlements.
“Witch! It’s a witch!”
A Witch the Captains say. It was a cursory term but it can be easily thought of as the Enemy counterpart to Psykers, similar to how the Invaders mirrored the Soldiers, though rather miserably. And withal, the Witches, instead of harnessing the pure essence of the psionic stream found their powers in the realms of taboo and eldritch.
“Shit! Find her!” A Captain ordered, his directive clearly heard above the din and drum of battle, “Burn her! Make her repent in the deepest pits of Hell!”
“Where are the Magi!? Call the Magi!”
The Magi, those of great wisdom and deep depth within the secrets of the Arcane. Where the Psykers failed to match up, the Magi would cover those leaks.
Those Magi, often overseers of the Walls, were adrift. None to be found.
It was strange. Suspicious when considering the circumstances.
“Lizards! Captain Harwitz, those scaly bastards have breached the hallowed grounds!” An alert. One more frightening than the last.
Like a recital, yet more elements came into view. What sheer absurdity…
Not even the court Jesters could provide such a farcical account.
This forty seventh invasion attempt was set to be different from the last, it didn't take a senile, blind man with parkinson's to tell.
The Magi… It was easy to see what happened to them. If the Lizards breached the hallowed grounds, the sanctum of the Magi, then it is easily said that the Magi were no more.
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Draconic arts were a hard counter to users of the Arcane ayont.
“Get the acolytes! Cleanse those blue budded bastards!”
Likewise, Divine arts were impressive at suppressing the Draconic.
However, in a twist of bitter reality that was somewhat expected after the first two times, the Acolytes were already found deceased. The blest quarters of the Acolytes had already been ransacked. Those that worshipped the Cult of Blood and those that preached the Mercy of Sacrifice had bested the Acolytes in a war of faith.
"May the immolation of the Imperium serve as great satisfaction to the One's of Mercy!" They canted with eyes full of misled zeal.
This whole ambivalence was so comical, it would fit the bill of an elaborate duel of scissors, paper, rock, lizard, spock.
The Allies lost each front. When they tried to pull out a spock, the Enemy already had paper plastered up, or when paper was evoked, lizard bit down.
A coup de main of unrealistic proportions which would be better suited as a folk idiom rather than a fact of the matter.
This forty seventh attempt… Where did they all come from? It was just supposed to be the red headed Invaders, but it seemed that all the Enemies of the Imperium had banded together and they even caught an edge over us! What was this?
Is this all a strange illusory daze? Is this One watching a theatrical play?
With the battlements cleared and the keep in shambles, the Enemy did what they did best.
They ravaged and destroyed. Defiled and smirched.
Walls were dozed and broken, stamped on until the very Bricks were ground away.
The Masons… They would surely cry if they saw such a scene.
The Enemy had no honour. There was no valediction for anyone, whether it be Ally or Enemy, only a one minded destruction. Only jeers. Scorn at the deceased and fallen.
Oh how those sordid scum dare raise their banners above the heap of the fallen. How this One wished to bite back, but it was beyond the limitations that the Architects set.
Wall was only for defence. To provide a firm and stable staging ground for the Allies.
There was deep melancholy as the Enemy performed a vile disassembly.
A lamentation cut short.
And this One… This Wall has failed. Like the Magi and the Psykers. Like the Captains and Soldiers.
There was no more Wall after the
Forty seventh attempt.
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